


Just A Normal Kid

by WordWiz777



Series: Rosie and the Avengers [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Adoption, Avengers Family, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Geniuses, Infinity War and Endgame don't happen here, Infinity War? what's that?, Multi, Non-Powered Main Character, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Post-Iron Man 1, Team as Family, The Avengers Need a Hug, the avengers are one big happy family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:01:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 36,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28811595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WordWiz777/pseuds/WordWiz777
Summary: Thirteen year old Rosanna Woods' life turns upside down after she's adopted by Tony Stark's best friend. With a new name and a better life, she's determined to help her Dad and Uncle Tony be superheroes, but it's not always so easy. Her skills as a hacker and hand-to-hand fighter come in handy over the next few years as she gains a new family of Avengers along the way.Rosanna makes it her job to call the Avengers out on their stupid decisions and makes life so much better for the people of the MCU. She's ecstatic that her newfound family of reckless, dumb and immature superheroes is growing so quickly, but she makes it a point to be there for everyone. It's not easy, balancing work and all her extra Avenger-related activities, but she manages quite well. After all, what's family for?AU: starts before Iron Man 2 and goes on till Civil War (which does not happen).Or: The MCU AU written by a salty author who hates Civil War and Thanos and refuses to acknowledge either happened.Cross-posted on Wattpad and Fanfcition.net
Relationships: James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Original Female Character(s), Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Sharon Carter/Steve Rogers, Tony Stark & Original Female Character(s)
Series: Rosie and the Avengers [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112297
Comments: 11
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posted on Wattpad and Fanfiction.net under the same name.

Rosie's alarm rang at 6:00 and she stretched out an arm to shut it off, before sitting up in bed and rubbing her eyes. Her phone buzzed, and she picked it up to see a text from her father.

_**Dad:** Morning. I had to go out of town for a week. Some urgent work came up._

_There's enough food in the fridge for about three days. I've put some money in your account too. Use it to order takeout or go shopping for groceries. Don't get into trouble at school._

Sighing, she dragged herself out of bed, and got ready for school. At 7:00 sharp, she was running out of the house in jeans, sneakers, her favourite Harry Potter T-shirt and hoodie, school bag on her shoulder.

Deciding that she needed the exercise, Rosie decided to walk to school instead of taking the subway. She had been pulling out her earbuds and phone to listen to her newest playlist, when the loud screeching of wheels caught her attention. An expensive-looking blue car veered dangerously round the corner and the faint wailing of police sirens was getting louder.

Rosie realized that the car was going to crash into the sidewalk right where a woman and a toddler were, so she moved as fast as she could, shoving them out of the way just as the blue car veered onto the sidewalk and hit a railing with a crumpling of metal. Thankfully, she wasn't directly under it like the woman and her kid would have been, but a large part of the broken railing fell on her leg. It was unbelievably heavy and she felt atleast one bone crack under its weight.

Two men jumped out from the front of the car. Cursing under his breath, the taller man opened the back door before dragging someone out from there. Rosie let out a gasp when she saw the cloth covering the person's face and his bound wrists. He also seemed to have been drugged, based on the unsteady walk. The captive was wearing an expensive looking suit, complete with blazer, waistcoat and tie.

The other man looked around as the people on the sidewalk ran away in fear. His gaze fell on Rosie who was desperately trying to lift the heavy weight off her leg, and the look on his face sent chills up her spine.

He ran towards her, and she felt rough hands grabbing her and forcibly hoisting her up from under the debris. The sirens were getting louder and louder by the second. Her ankle got caught on something and as the man yanked it free, she felt pain blossoming up her leg from her foot. Rosie prayed that nothing had been broken too badly as she was pulled up roughly, and her leg nearly gave way under the weight of her body. A cold object was pressed to her temple, which she realised was a gun.

In her peripheral vision, Rosie saw a few police cars stopping, and officers getting out of them and pointing guns at her captor. He shouted out, "Put down your guns and this little girl won't get her brains blown out." He pressed the gun against her head even harder, and she heard a soft 'click'. The man's hand tensed on her shoulder, and he yelled again. "I SAID, PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS!"

She assumed that the person with the bag on their head was the original victim, and a chase had resulted in the current situation. She began to struggle as much as she could and pleaded, "Let me go, please. I don't want to get hurt. Please... I was just going to school-"

"SHUT UP! I'm not the man to listen to your pathetic whimpering, girl. Say another word, and I'll shoot you in the head!"

One of the cops set down his gun, and held his hands up in the universal "I'm unarmed" gesture, before slowly walking towards them. Rosie could see her vision blurring around the edges, and she assumed she was going into shock. Her leg was hurting worse than anything she'd ever felt before and she was getting woozy.

"Stop Moving! Another step, and I'll shoot!" The man yelled once again. The cop immediately stopped in his tracks. "Alright, let the kid go, and then we can talk. Okay? I'm Deputy Leeds, the officer handling this case. We can come to a compromise. Just let the kid go."

"Not happening, Leeds. You and your whole team will move out of my way, so that we can get to your car, and won't move a muscle till we're out of sight. Get it? I won't hesitate to shoot this one if a single cop moves even an inch. She isn't as expensive as he is." He pointed to the other hostage, who was also being held at gunpoint by the other thug.

"What's your name, kid?" the man growled in her ear. Knowing that her dad was an important man, and she could be held for a lot of ransom, Rosie blurted out the first name that came to mind, "Michelle Anderson."

"Oh is it? But I feel like you're lying to me, Michelle."

Rosie didn't get scared easily, but that tone freaked her out. She knew that whatever was coming wasn't good. The other man let out a laugh. "We've got someone with something to hide! Looks like we've got ourselves another nice little hostage."

"I'll ask you again. What. Is. Your. Name?"

"Rosanna Woods."

"So that's why you look familiar. You, Rosanna, are my new favourite person." The other man leered.

"Move!" He snarled at the cop, pressing the gun harder against her head. Rosie began to whimper from the combination of the pain in her leg and fear, while her vision got blurrier and blurrier. Deputy Leeds was forced to move, but he locked eyes with Rosie, giving her a reassuring smile. She gestured as best as she could with her eyes and expression, which her captor couldn't see, towards her abandoned school bag, hoping the cop got the message. She mouthed "Tracker".

His expression didn't change much, but she saw a tiny gleam of hope in the cop's eyes. He ordered his men to stand down and move away, allowing her captor to drag her into one of the police cars and dump her in the back with the other hostage before tying her up and gagging her as well. All this while, the other man kept his gun pointed at her head, ensuring that the police won't do anything.

As the car started moving, Rosie could feel the pain in her leg worsen. Something was definitely broken. Black spots danced in her eyes, and she passed out from the pain.

Rosie had no idea how much time had passed when she woke up, in a dark room that was lit by a faint blue glow. The gag had been taken out of her mouth, and her hands and feet had been untied. Craning her neck, she saw that the glow was coming from the chest of the other man who was with her. She recognized her fellow hostage who still seemed unconscious. The blue glow, though... Was that what she thought it was? If it really was one, then...

"Mr. Stark?" She called out. "Mr. Stark? Are you awake?" The man stirred. "Mr. Stark!" She called out again. He jerked upright from where he was slumped against the wall. "W-W-h-h-o? W-h-ere?"

Rosie crawled towards him slowly, trying not to put pressure on her injured leg, and sat down next to him. Raising her bound hands, she pulled the bag off of his head. As the light illuminated his face, Rosie confirmed that he was Tony Stark.

He looked wildly around, before his eyes fell on her face. "What day is it?" He croaked in a hoarse voice.

"I don't know. Are you hurt, Mr. Stark?"

"No. My mouth is numb. Why is my mouth numb? Who the hell are you? Why the heck do you sound like a kid?"

She gave a small giggle. "I am a kid, Mr. Stark. My name's Rosie."

"They kidnapped you too, huh? Have any idea why?"

"I was just going to school when the car they were driving with you in it crashed, and a railing fell on my leg. I think they took me as insurance that the police wouldn't follow them."

"Do you know what time it is?"

"Nope. They took my watch and phone. They got me at around seven on Tuesday morning, I don't know how much time passed after that, though."

"The last thing I remember was getting into a car to go to the airport with my friend in the middle of Monday night. I was supposed to be on my jet right now. Pep's going to kill me for getting kidnapped again. Will anyone come looking for you?"

"My dad isn't in town, and no one's checking up on me for three days. I don't see my school organizing a search, so no." She began to ramble on, as she did when stressed. The significance of the situation was finally hitting her.

\--------------------------------------------

Tony Stark just sat there, ignoring the kid who was freaking out, and thought of ways to get out of there. He suddenly remembered the tracker he'd planted on himself after the last time he got kidnapped, and searched for the watch he always wore. Not there. He groped around in the dark for his shoes, to look for the chip embedded in the soles. Not there. Tracking dot on Arc Reactor? Broken. Hoping against hope, he checked if he still had his belt buckle. The final tracker was supposed to be there. Tony could feel the cracked and burnt surface of his iron man buckle. They had known about all of them.

He suddenly began feeling the same helplessness he had been while in the cave. The memories of the dark, musty, old cave came flooding back. He could feel the phantom pains in his chest, where his reactor was, and remembered the Ten Rings. The display in Afghanistan, the attack, the 'Jericho' missiles, all came flooding back. He remembered Yinsen, to whom he owed his life and could never have escaped if not for the doctor who had given his life. This time, all he had were his wits, and a kid who he did not know anything about.

The realization that he wasn't going to get out of this situation hit Tony like a brick, and he began hyperventilating, imagining the horrors in store for him. He relived the pain, the anxiety and the weakness from Afghanistan. Imaginary sounds made him flinch, expecting a Ten Rings member to come into the room and-

"-Stark! Mr. Stark! You aren't there! It's just us! You and me, Rosie. I'm not here to hurt you! Please, Mr. Stark, it's just me." He heard someone say. Taking in a huge gulp of air, Tony saw his vision beginning to clear, a fuzzy outline in front of him. When had the flashback begun? Tony struggled to breathe, his breaths coming in short gasps that left him dizzy and unfocused. "Follow my instructions! In... out! Breathe in and breathe out! Breathe In and breathe out! Yeah, exactly like that! Come on, Mr. Stark, you can do this. In... out. In...out."

His vision completely cleared, and he saw the dimly lit room, and a small figure in front of him. Rosie, he remembered. The two of them had been kidnapped. He'd had a panic attack and the girl had managed to snap him out of it. "I'm fine. Back off, kid. Personal space."

She moved away, but he heard a faint groan. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?" The concern he felt surprised him. Tony Stark, feeling concerned for a teenager he had met ten minutes ago? Impossible, it must have been the after-effects of the flashback.

"I think my ankle is broken, possibly dislocated. Can't feel my toes, either. I'm not sure cuz I can't see anything clearly." Tony felt guilty for his selfishness as the first thing she had done was ask him if he was hurt, while he had basically insulted her. With a sudden burst of kindness, he called out to her, "Come closer. The light might just be enough."

She slowly crawled closer before extending her leg and taking off her shoe which had been damaged quite badly. He saw her wince and bite her lip in pain as the shoe came off. The sock was in tatters, and she managed to rip it off. Tony was horrified when he saw her foot. Three of her toes hung limply, while a fourth was pointing the wrong way, her foot had swollen up to what looked like double its size. Rosie's ankle was purple, and swollen just like her foot. He could guess that her whole leg was hurt quite badly based on her winces when she touched it.

"My foot's pointing the right way, so not dislocated. Toes are definitely broken, ankle might be too, seeing that I can't move it." She poked her calf. "Ow! Might be a surface fracture, or ligament tear. I can't walk without support. Just great." She huffed. Tony was amazed to see her matter-of-fact attitude and quick diagnosis. He suddenly had a newfound respect for the girl who was so calm with a broken foot and had actually kept her wits about her to pull him out of a flashback and stave off a subsequent panic attack.

"Where did you learn this, kid? I don't think they teach this shit in high school."

"I don't know about high school, Mr. Stark. I'm in eighth grade. I learnt this on my own from books and a nursing program at the Bellevue. I've always wanted to do my bit for the community, and with all you superheroes running around, this was the only way I could think of right now."

The more Tony listened, the greater his resolution to help this girl escape became. For the first time in his life, Tony realized what it meant to have kids and care for them. He could feel his supposedly non-existent dad instincts awaken, sending him the message: Injured child, comfort and protect immediately. Injured child, comfort and protect immediately.

And that's what he did. "So you know how to make a splint?" She nodded. "I can cobble together a makeshift one from whatever's left of my shoe, sock and hoodie. My hair tie will come in handy. Something stiff to place on either side of my foot... is there anything else in the room?"

He turned, letting the light from his reactor sweep across the room. It was small, maybe ten feet across, and the same in length. There was a small table in the middle, and Tony could see the faint outline of two doors on the far wall. Getting up, he walked over to the table and found an empty metal bowl and plate on it. The table was made of thin strips of wood nailed together, which gave him an idea. He grabbed the plate and used it as a lever to pry off the nails and pull two medium sized strips of wood free.

Tony watched, impressed, as she worked on the splint. Tying it off with a strip of cloth she had torn from her hoodie using her bare hands, Rosie secured everything with a braided leather band that was in her hair. "Done! This'll have to do for now. I'll need a proper doctor ASAP cuz broken bones can heal improperly and have a permanant effect on my leg. All I can do now is elevate it and hope for the best."

She took off her other shoe and dumped her hoodie on top of it to make a small raised pile of clothes on which she placed her foot. "How long do you think we'll be here?"

Tony frowned, thinking. "Until the ransom is paid. All the trackers and tech I had is destroyed, and you don't have one, so no one's coming to find us anytime soon." What he didn't add was that the darkness of the room was messing with his brain and rendering him unable to think properly. Tony had to use all his concentration to keep himself from another panic attack. The kid had already pulled him out of one and he wasn't going to let her see another. Plus, she couldn't walk, meaning that he couldn't guarantee both of them escaping and he wasn't planning on leaving her behind.

Suddenly, she grabbed his arm. "I'm scared of the dark, Mr. Stark. Are we ever going to get out of here?" He raised an eyebrow at the action, but didn't push her off, assuming that she had a motive for doing so, and a few seconds later, his suspicions were confirmed.

She was tracing words on his arm under the guise of needing his support. Tony inwardly smirked at her brilliance. Listeners. Tracker in hairband. Told cops. Might rescue soon.

He patted her hand, and started rambling on about how they would get out to waste time while he thought of an escape plan. Cautiously, he traced words on the back of her hand. Will escape. Find doctor. Good idea. Tony decided that when they got out, the first thing he would do was offer the girl a job, or at the least, an internship.

He was still feeling a little out of it from whatever he had been drugged with, and he could see that Rosie was almost nodding off, her body shutting down to help deal with the injury. "How about we take a nap now? Your leg's dealt with, I'm still quite dizzy. I don't think anything's going to happen." He suggested.

She agreed and let go of his arm before leaning back against the wall and closing her eyes. Tony waited for a few minutes till he could see her breathing even out, before falling asleep himself, and dreaming about being rescued.


	2. Chapter 2

Tony was jerked awake by a large hand slapping his face. He was pulled up harshly, and out of nowhere, a hard punch landed on his nose. Tony could feel his nose break under the force, and blood started to trickle down his face. A sharp jab to his stomach brought him to his knees and repeated blows to his ribs made him gasp for breath. Definitely cracked at least one rib.

He looked around wildly to see if he could see Rosie anywhere, but she was gone, which scared him. A rough hand grabbed his collar and dragged him along the floor to another room, where he saw Rosie tied to a chair and a rag stuffed in her mouth. Tony let out a sigh of relief when he didn't see any other injuries on her. Try as he might, Tony Stark could not help but care for the girl who had earned his respect. He was then tied up and bound to a chair just like she was.

"Switch on the camera." A gruff voice was heard. Tony's head was yanked upward, by someone pulling his hair. He felt a cold blade on his neck, and a man spoke. "If you want Tony Stark back alive, it will cost you the plans for the Iron Man suit and the Arc Reactor technology. Leave the papers in a black bag in Locker number 035 at Rockfeller Centre Subway Station by Thursday evening, or else all you will get is the body of an ex-billionaire." The man dug the knife into Tony's throat, drawing blood. "Convince them, Stark." He growled.

Tony spit out blood from his mouth, managing to get out, "Go to Hell." The man gave him another punch to the head, saying, "The price just went up. Throw in 10 million dollars as well. Or else this knife might slip just little bit and we'll all have to say goodbye to Tony Stark." The video was switched off and the man stuffed a rag in Tony's mouth.

"And now for our special prisoner." The man advanced on Rosie and pulled the gag out of her mouth. She coughed a few times and the man took out a phone from his pocket. "Video call to your father. Now!" She just glared at him. "I thought you'd do that."

He stretched out a leg, and kicked her broken foot. She cried out in pain, tears forming in her eyes. "Call him, or I'll do that again." She shook her head. The man kicked her leg again and there was an audible crack this time. Tony saw the girl biting her lip, no doubt trying not to scream, but she still didn't reach out for the device. Another kick and she nodded slowly, "I'll do it." He untied her hands, and gave her the phone.

She fiddled with it for a second, before Tony heard a familiar ringtone. He racked his brains, where had he heard that before? The call was answered, "Hey Rosie!" Tony gave a start at the familiar voice, but the hits he had received to his head made it feel as if it was full of cotton and he wasn't able to think properly. "Why are you calling in the middle of the night? Are you-" He was cut off by the man, "Hello, Boss. You haven't learnt what the punishment for selling us out is. This young lady will help you realize that."

He kicked her broken leg again, and Rosie screamed, tears running down her cheeks. He harshly pulled her long hair, causing her to cry out again, before slapping her face. A red handprint formed on her small cheek and Tony wished with all his might that he could get out of the chair and help the girl. Tony was astonished that there was no sound from the call, as he watched the man hit Rosie again and again, even slamming her head against the chair a couple of times, and she began crying, "D-d-ad, h-he-help. P-pl-pl-please." She begged.

Finally, the man stopped. "You will arrange for our escape if you want to see your daughter again. She shall stay with us until we board a ship or plane to get out of the country. Going to the police will be useless. We have changed our location from what we decided earlier. Choose. Your daughter? Or Stark's favour?"

The voice came loud and clear from the phone. "Do what you wish with her. I never wanted the brat. The only reason I kept her was the hopes that she had inherited her mother's gift. It is apparent that she did not and getting rid of her now is difficult. You have done me a favour by taking her, Ivan. I don't have to worry about keeping her existence a secret from Stark." The call was abruptly ended.

Tony was horrified. His father had never cared much about him, but he'd never gone to such lengths. He saw Rosie's face properly for the first time in the light, and another wave of familiarity hit him. He felt certain that he'd met her father if not her before, but the beating she'd got had caused parts of her face to swell up and turn purple, which didn't help his muddled brain in recognising her.

The kidnapper looked beyond angry. "YOU USELESS GIRL! THIS IS ALL BECAUSE OF YOU!" He punched her hard in the jaw, knocking her unconscious. A few minutes later, another man came in. "The recording's been sent out. Someone's keeping watch at the station. I've some food upstairs. Put them back in the room and we can figure out what to do over dinner."

Tony and Rosie were dragged back to the dark room they had been in earlier and the man left, grumbling under his breath. Crawling as best as he could with his busted ribs, Tony went to a still unconscious Rosie and tried to assess her injuries. Thankfully, she wasn't bleeding too badly, and Tony was able to bandage her head with strips of cloth he tore from her mangled hoodie, before he passed out too.

He was awakened by Rosie stirring next to him. She whimpered in pain, her tough girl façade destroyed. Tony could hear her soft crying, and he sat up, ignoring the pain shooting through his chest. "Rosie, shhh. Don't move. That'll make it hurt even more. Please stop crying, kid. I know how it feels when your dad doesn't want you-it's damn hard to come to terms with-but I need you to focus on something else. How about you tell me who your dad is, then we can go find him together once we get out of here and ask him why he said that, okay?" He wasn't sure where all this kindness and patience was coming from, but Tony knew that the girl would need it after everything that happened.

She let out a few shuddering breaths, and whispered, "Okay. My dad's name is Arnold Woods. He works for you in the Legal Department at Stark Industries."

Tony's blood ran cold at those words. He suddenly recognized the voice on the call, and the similarity in facial structure between father and daughter despite her injuries. It had been staring at him in the face! How the hell hadn't he worked it out by now? Still, a part of him wanted confirmation, so he asked.

"Tell me, is your dad is six feet tall? Does he have blue eyes, buzz cut blonde hair, scar on right side of the lip, middle-eastern complexion? He limps on his left leg?"

Rosie said, "Yeah that's him. You know him, then?"

"Yeah, I do." What Tony didn't say was, "He's my personal lawyer. I met him in the last year of college. Arnie, Rhodey and I have been almost like brothers ever since. The two of them joined the army, but Arnold had to leave when he got shrapnel in his leg from an explosion. It damaged his nerves or something, so I offered him a job at SI, and he worked his way up the ranks quite quickly. I trusted him with my life."

Tony now had a lot more pressure on him to get Rosie out alive, after what her father had told the thugs. Knowing Arnold for all these years, Tony had recognised the tone which he had used. The man had truly meant what he had said, but Tony did not dare to tell that to the girl. He let her have some hope that her Dad still loved her.

God knows what would happen to her if he left her behind alone. He made himself a promise that he would help Rosie escape. He would not let what happened to Yinsen happen to her. He was a different man now. No more Merchant of Death, he was Iron Man, the superhero kids looked up to. Reassured by the decision, he turned to Rosie who was asleep again, curled up on her side to conserve body heat. Seeing her shivering, he felt around in the dark for his blazer which was lying in a corner of the room and draped it over her small frame like a blanket.

Seeing her hurt so badly both physically and emotionally pissed him off. Tony couldn't fall asleep again, so he began planning his revenge on Arnold, taking advantage of the fact that Arnold did not know that his conversation with his daughter had been overheard by Tony. Tony would not let Rosie go back to a father like that. He had suffered with Howard and the effects were obvious in his behaviour. He would do everything in his power to save her from his ex-best friend. It was obvious to him that Arnold had been in on the kidnapping and had later double-crossed the thugs for some reason. Whatever it was, he was sure that it wasn't something altruistic.

Just as he was perfecting his revenge, Tony heard the faint sounds of police sirens. He waited silently, and heard them getting louder by the second. Rosie woke up when the sounds got louder, and he hurriedly told her his plan. She nodded, "I'm fine with it. Are you sure you want to do that Mr. Stark?"

Reassuring her that he meant it, Tony settled down to wait for their rescuers. They could hear shouts and gunfire; the kidnappers must have been putting up a fight. Doors were slammed open and they heard the thundering of dozens of feet a floor or two above them. Tony assumed that they were someplace underground which was probably quite well hidden, so he decided to give the rescuers a clue.

"This way! We're here!" He shouted as loudly as he could.

Rosie yelled too, "HELP! WE'RE TRAPPED! THIS WAY!" She was a lot louder than he was, though. The pounding of feet got louder, and they heard shouts of "Hands in the air!" "Drop the gun!" before there was a rapping on the door. "Tony? You in there?" Rhodey' voice was heard. Tony almost cried in relief when he heard his best friend.

"Yeah! The kid's here too-" A sudden bolt of pain shot through his ribs when he moved too quickly and Tony hissed in pain.

"Get away from the door, we're breaking it open!" Rhodey said from the outside. They crawled away from it as fast as they could with all their injuries and four bullets later, the door swung open. The sudden glare of a dozen flashlights blinded Tony and he raised his arm to block his eyes. "Tony!" Rhodey ran towards them, followed by half a dozen cops.

"Hey Rhodey. This is Rosie. Say hi, Rosie." She tried to stand up, but her leg collapsed under her and she fell back down with a thud, letting out a small whimper. Rhodey's eyes widened as he took in their battered state and he moved to help Tony, but the man refused his hand.

"Help her first. You'll have to carry her to the ambulance, and get the cops to call her father and tell him to come to the hospital. I'll tell you everything later." A confused Rhodey did as he was told, gently picking up Rosie bridal style before walking out. She cried out in pain when he accidentally brushed her injured leg, and Tony saw a look of fury cross his friend's face as he left. Those kidnappers were definitely going to feel the wrath of Colonel Rhodes.

The cops helped Tony up and outside the building into a waiting Ambulance. A paramedic patched him up as they drove to the nearest Stark-owned Hospital.

An hour later, Tony was sitting up in his hospital bed with Rhodes and Deputy Leeds in chairs at his bedside. They told him how Arnold had placed a frantic call to the police saying Tony had been kidnapped and the culprits had taken the blue BMW that they had been driving. The car chase had resulted in Rosie being taken hostage, but she had managed to give the Deputy a hint about a tracker on her.

She'd somehow managed to hide it well enough for the kidnappers to overlook it. Her phone, which had fallen out of her pocket, had been connected to the tracker. It had taken them longer than expected because the tracker hadn't been switched on for quite some time, but as soon as they had concrete data, the police had contacted Rhodey to come and help find Tony and her.

Arnold had given a report to the police and gone back home, claiming that he needed a day or two to recover from the scare. That, in Tony's opinion, proved that Arnold did not care about Rosie to even bother file a complaint when she went missing.

A pissed-off Tony told the two other men what had happened during the day and half they'd spent as prisoners, and as he'd expected, they both were livid when they heard how Arnold left her.

"Why the hell did you tell us to contact him then?" Rhodey demanded. "It's Arnie, dude. Her dad is Arnie Woods! He arranged the whole damned thing! Ivan, or whatever his name is, realized that Rosie was the daughter of the man that sold them out. That's why he took her hostage. He wanted to get revenge on Arnie by beating up his daughter on video, but that plan didn't exactly work out, did it?" He let out a hollow laugh.

Rhodey looked ready to go and beat up his ex-best friend, but Tony said, "Not yet. I've cooked up a little surprise for him."


	3. Chapter 3

Rosie was given pain meds in the ambulance and rushed to the hospital, where a few quick X-rays of her leg were taken. The break had not been a clean one, so the doctors had told her that surgery was needed to insert a rod in her leg for the bones to stay together and heal properly. When she woke up after the surgery, her eyelids felt incredibly heavy, but she forced them open. Rosie saw her father standing in the doorway of her room, looking right at her face. "D-d-dad?" She croaked out, trying to reach him, but all she got was an indifferent expression.

Her father came into the room, and sat down in an empty chair, saying nothing. The look on his face confirmed Rosie's fear. He really had meant what he had said during the video call. She had been trying to convince herself that it was a ploy to fool the kidnappers, but on look at his face brought all her hopes down, shattering her heart.

She decided to make one last effort, "D-dad? W-why?" He stared stonily at the wall behind her head, and said, "Your mother had a unique and useful ability, but then she went and got herself killed on a mission for SHIELD. I raised you in the hope that it had been passed on to you, but it has obviously not happened. Once we are out of here, you cannot breathe a single word about what I said to you.

"We will go back to how it used to be. I have ensured that no news channels have gotten their hands on the only recorded video of what happened. The story that you are going to stick to is that you fell down the stairs and hurt yourself. I have a reputation to keep, and Stark won't be learning of your existence. You will follow that or else there will be consequences." When Rosie shook her head, he cast a furtive eye around the room before moving towards her bed and grabbing her neck with both hands and beginning to choke her. "H-h-help" she croaked out as loud as she could, trying to get as much air into her lungs as possible.

She heard quick footsteps and a door banging open and a police officer dashed into the room, followed by Deputy Leeds. They leaped towards Arnold and tore him off of her, leaving her gasping for breath. It happened so fast that he couldn't resist, but that didn't mean he went without a protest. "Why the hell are you arresting me? I was just assessing my daughter's injuries! I haven't done anything wrong!" Deputy Leeds gave him the customary speech, but Arnold still refused to go. "What am I accused of?"

"Kidnapping, falsification of evidence, interference with police proceedings, attempted murder-"

"That's ridiculous! I am an innocent man, as well as Tony Stark's lawyer! He's going to ruin your lives if you arrest me!"

"I don't think so Arnold. After all, I gave him the evidence and permission to make an arrest on my premises. Oh, you didn't know? This is a Stark owned Medical centre." Mr. Stark had arrived. He was in a wheelchair being pushed by Colonel Rhodes. He seemed unusually tense, sitting ramrod straight in his wheelchair.

"Wha-"

"I was there in the same room, you wretch, when the video call was going on. I. Heard. Every. Single. Word. Did you really think that you would be allowed to meet your recently-kidnapped daughter in a room that wasn't bugged? Every word you said had been recorded." He gave a sinister smile, "Woods, you're fired. Get this sorry excuse of a man out of my sight, Deputy."

Colonel Rhodes moved to the bedside table and opened a small box, handing what looked like an audio recorder to the Deputy, before telling Arnold, "You better thank your stars that Tony refused to let me deal with you, Woods, or you'd be feeling ten times the pain she is right now."

A doctor hurried into the room to and checked her throat to see if any damage had been done and gave her a small smile when he finished. "They pulled him off in time, Miss. Woods. There's minor bruising, but it'll heal within the week."

Rosie watched with mixed feelings as her father was dragged out of the room, snarling threats. On one hand, she knew how much pain that man had caused her, Mr. Stark and Colonel Rhodes with his betrayal and that he deserved what was coming to him, but on the other hand, he was still the man who had raised her for the past ten years.

But then, it hit her. The signs had been there all along. She was never allowed to interact with the neighbors, nor bring home any friends from school. The ban from social media and lack of information about her mother suddenly made sense. His unexplained absences which she had earlier dismissed as work, suddenly seemed suspicious. People don't spend 12 hours a day, every day of the week at 'work'.

With each clue that came up, Rosie realised how obvious the signs of Arnold leading a double life were. He had never cared about her, only providing enough for her to survive. She was being raised like a sheep for slaughter-no one gave a damn about her. A tear trickled down her cheek when she realised that she was truly alone now; her mom was dead and with Arnold in prison, she was definitely going to end up at either at a group home or in foster care.

Mr. Stark seemed to understand her dilemma, because he asked to be wheeled closer to her. "Hey Rosie, I'm so sorry for being the person who dragged you into this mess. It was the greed to share my fame that led to your father doing all of this. I know that this doesn't help much, but I'm really sorry for what happened to you because of me."

Colonel Rhodes spoke up, "Arnold was like my brother, and I would have visited you years ago if I had known you existed. He never told us that he was dating anyone, let alone that he had a daughter..." He trailed off when a policeman walked inside the room and handed him a sheet of paper. Rhodes read it and turned slightly pale. "Are you sure this is accurate?" he asked.

The cop nodded. "We ran the tests three times just to be sure."

Rhodes cleared his throat and said, "I'm sorry, I just have to step outside for a second. If you'll excuse me." He practically ran outside, furiously whispering with the cop. It was just Mr. Stark and her in the room now.

He just sat there for a while. "Y'know kid, I had got the impression that teens were a nuisance, but that was until I met you. Every single thing you did back there blew my mind. The fact that I'm sitting here alive and relatively unharmed is only because of your smarts. I should have been the sensible one with an escape plan, but all I did was panic. I owe you, kid."

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his right hand. "Your tracker saved both our lives while stopping some important tech from getting into the wrong hands. It was quite impressive, did you make it yourself?"

She blushed, "Yeah. I really like programming, mechanics and building stuff. Robotics club's only in high school but I didn't want to wait till then to build something cool. I cobbled this together from a couple of YouTube videos and a miniature GPS device I bought from a shop with my allowance. Da-Arnold didn't like me doing things that weren't girlish, so I wasn't able to make much stuff before he found my stash and threw it away." Rosie wasn't sure where this was going.

"It was good for a eighth grader. The way you disguised it was quite clever and the leather finish was perfectly misleading. With your common sense and that matter-of-fact attitude... You've got potential, kid. I'd like to offer you an internship at SI. You don't have to agree, but I think it'd be a valuable experience."

"Wait, what?"

At that exact moment, Lieutenant-Colonel Rhodes walked in. "Sorry for leaving so abruptly, but I got some unexpected news. Rosie, the police weren't able to find your birth certificate, so they authorised a DNA test on your blood this morning. It says here that your mother passed away ten years ago?"

Rosie nodded, "He wouldn't talk about her at all, no matter how much I asked. Actually, when I think about it now, he never spent much time with me. All I know is that my mother's name was Marlene and that she died when I was 3 or 4, and what he said a few minutes ago about her joining some agency... SHIELD, I think the name was."

Tony looked at his best friend, surprised, "Aunt Peggy's niece, Marlene?" Rhodes nodded. "But her kid died a few days after it was born."

The Colonel shook his head, "Apparently not. It's confirmed that Marlene Carter is her mother and Arnold Woods is her father. All of Peggy's family lives abroad so the police were going to call CPS, but thankfully, they spoke to me first. Marlene made me Godfather and her cousin Sharon, Godmother to her baby when she was seven months pregnant. She even included in her will that I become the legal guardian of her child, but at that time, we didn't pay much attention to it as we though you had died. But now-"

"You're my guardian and Godfather." Rosie finished, surprised.

Smiling softly, he continued, "Exactly. CPS let me have temporary custody until they dug up Marlene's will and verified my claim. You don't have to worry about anything, okay? I've got it all handled. You just rest and focus on getting better, kiddo."

"Is my Godmother alive?" Rosie asked, a tiny gleam of hope in her eyes.

"Yeah, she is. I called her and she said that she wouldn't fight me over custody since her job was demanding and you were better off with me. She promised to visit, though."

The worry about what would happen to her dissipated and almost crying in relief, she whispered, "Thank you so much Colonel Rhodes."

"It's not an issue. So, do you mind me having custody over you?"

She shook her head.

"Then, you gotta drop the Colonel Rhodes. Call me Rhodey, or James."

"Can I call you Uncle Rhodey?" She asked shyly. She had only just met the man, but Rosie felt like she had known him all her life. A wide grin crossed the said man's face as he replied, "I hoped you would one day. Marlene was basically my sister and I always regretted that I never got to meet my niece before she 'died'."

Rosie was visited by the doctor who had done her surgery, and he informed her of the extent of her injuries. The doctor had complimented her makeshift splint and claimed that without it, the kidnapper's kicks would have definitely dislocated her ankle. All five of her toes were broken and there had been quite some nerve damage to the last two.

He said that there was a chance that she won't be able to feel her last two toes, but it was highly unlikely, given that she was just thirteen. There was a minor hairline fracture in her femur, but the major damage had been to her tibia. The doctor assured her that there hadn't been any complications during the surgery.

"The cast will have to stay for a minimum of five months after which we can remove the rod and pins. You will be on crutches for another three months, by when I think it will have healed and you will be able to start the physiotheraphy sessions. But I must tell you, no strenuous exercise-"

"Until you say that I can, or it'll get worse. I know Doc, I've been to enough medical workshops to understand the importance of rest. I'll be careful."

"Then I don't have anything else to inform you about, except for the fact that Colonel Rhodes was granted guardianship by CPS and he said that they're setting up your living space. As of now, you are scheduled to be discharged in a week, seeing that you have a slight concussion from the multiple hits to the head. The rest of the bruising and cuts will all heal within a week or two, Miss. Woods." He gave her a reassuring smile and left.

The next morning, when a nurse declared her coherent enough to talk, Uncle Rhodey came to visit. He gave her a high-tech tab and asked her to choose the colours and furniture she wanted in her new room. Rosie had a field day designing her new living space the way she wanted and her Godfather gave an approving nod when he saw her final draft. After that, they days flew by and Rosie was ready to get out of the hospital.

Uncle Rhodey had come to bring her to her new home in the tower. He's brought her a new remote-controlled wheelchair too. "Tony made it. He got tired of depending on someone to wheel him around in the few days he had to spend in one. This one is connected to the AI in the Tower, and can be controlled by hand signals or voice commands. Pretty cool, huh?"

"Yeah, I'm excited to try it out!"

He lifted her off the bed and into the wheelchair. "Ready to start a new life?" He asked.

Rosie nodded, squaring her shoulders and sitting up straight. "Let's go."


	4. Chapter 4

After signing release papers for her, he wheeled her to a waiting car. Twenty minutes later they were inside the Lobby at Stark Tower. Rhodey guided her to a small room, where an automated Robot took her fingerprints and iris scan. "Name and age?" it asked.

Rhodey turned to her instead of answering. "Rosie, I understand if you're opposed to it, but I'd like to make an offer to adopt you. I can clearly see that you're having doubts on how long you can stay with me and this will confirm that you're staying here because we want you to, not out of pity or anything else." He awkwardly scratched the back of his neck while Rosie processed what he had told her.

She couldn't believe her ears. "A-are you serious? You really want to adopt me?" She'd become quite fond of him in the time he spent visiting her in the Hospital and she really wanted to live with him permanently. Rosie had no clue how to broach the subject, though, nor did she have any idea whether he even wanted to look after her any longer than he was legally obliged to.

"I understand you're having trust issues after everything that happened, and I want you to know that I've started to care for you like my own kid and I wouldn't want it any other way. This'll give us the sense of security that you are not going anywhere, kiddo."

She felt like crying out of happiness, but she asked again, just to be sure. "You're really doing this?"

"Of course. Why else would I make the offer? It's very hush-hush, in case you're worried about the fame that Tony and I deal with everyday. As far as I know, only a couple of CPS workers and two of Tony's lawyers know. Deputy Leeds has given his report, so there won't be any issues from Law Enforcement. All of them have signed waivers not to talk about it without your consent and adoption records are anyway unavailable to the general public."

"Would you mind if I-um-if I..."

"Yes?"

"Is it okay if I kept Carter as my last name? It'll help with the anonymity." Seeing the flicker of sadness in his eyes, she hurried to clarify. "It's not like I don't want to be known as your kid or anything! In fact, I hoped you would let Rhodes be my middle name."

"Rosanna Rhodes Carter," he murmured, smiling softly. "I really like the sound of that."

"Does that mean I call you Dad now?" She eagerly asked, but her face fell when he didn't reply. "I-I understand if you don't want me to-"

He cut her off hurriedly, "No, I'd love it if you called me that. It's just that I hadn't expected you to accept it so quickly. I must say that I'm looking forward to parenthood."

She gave him a hug. "Thanks for doing this for me, Dad."

If his eyes were unusually misty when he gave her her new access card, neither of them said anything.

"That's a Resident Level Card. It gives you access to all parts of the Tower except for Tony's workshop unless Tony gives you a personalized access code. No one other than the four-now five of us-who live here full time can access any floor above 80, so you can wander around and explore." He told her, guiding her to a hidden elevator.

Just as he was about to step inside, his phone started ringing. Dad made a face before receiving the call. "This is Lieutenant-Colonel Rhodes. Yes... Of course... Right now? Alright. I'll be there as soon as possible. Yes, sir. "

Rosie said, "Lemme guess, you have to go do something top-secret that you can't tell me about, and you have to leave right now?"

He sighed, running a hand across his tired-looking face. "Pretty accurate, kiddo. I was looking forward to showing you around, but I guess I'll have to leave it to J.A.R.V.I.S.. I hope aren't too mad at me..."

"I'm not mad at you, Rh-Dad. I get how important your job is. Don't worry about me - I'll be perfectly all right. Just tell me which floor and I can manage the rest."

"J.A.R.V.I.S.? Can you please take Rosie to the Living Area?" He asked out loud.

"Of course, sir. I would also like to inform you that there is a Military Jeep outside and a Captain Studger asking for you." A voice came from a small speaker in the lift. Rosie had expected high tech-stuff. It was Stark Towers, after all, but she never imagined that there would be a goddamn AI installed in the entire building.

"Thank you. I'll go there immediately. See you soon, Rosie."

He briskly walked off and the elevator door closed as it began to move upwards. "Welcome to Stark Tower, Miss Carter. I am J.A.R.V.I.S., the resident AI, and I am programmed into all the living areas of the Tower. I am here to assist you at all times. Would you prefer to go there first?"

"Yes please. Oh, and J.A.R.V.I.S., can you call me Rosie?"

"Of course, Miss Rosie. I would like to congratulate you on the adoption."

"Thank you."

A few minutes later, the elevator stopped and the doors automatically opened. "This is one of the Living Areas. The Tower was designed for more residents, so you are alone on this floor, Miss Rosie. This floor is a fully fledged home to make it easier for you in your current condition, but the Common Area on the Penthouse Level is also available. "

Wheeling herself into her new room, Rosie's mouth fell open.

It was absolutely enormous! There was a twin bed in one corner, just under a big window that looked out over the city. Ceiling to floor bookshelves covered one wall, with a cozy little reading nook nestled in the middle. A large pin-up board was on the opposite wall, with shelves that Rosie assumed were for her school books and the wooden desk that she had chosen a few days ago. A brand-new laptop, StarkPad and StarkPhone were sitting on the desk.

She had a medium-sized flat screen television opposite to the bed and her brand new closet, dressing table and mirror were in place. A pair of collapsible crutches were placed on her bed. Rosie mentally applauded her colour choices when she saw how well everything looked and hoped that she would be able to get her stuff very soon. It was much bigger than she had expected and Tony had spared no expense in making her comfortable and happy.

Rosie would have been made uneasy by the grand room she was now living in if it hadn't been for the talk that her new dad had given her a few days ago. He'd talked about how the work was done in her room and it was ready for her to move in, before warning her about the extravagance of Tony Stark.

"He's not very good with words and feelings, so buying stuff for you is his way of showing he cares. That said, you can always put your foot down if he does anything too extravagant. Just don't be too surprised when there's more stuff in your room than you asked for."

She quickly unpacked the small bag she had brought from the hospital before setting out to explore the Penthouse. There was an enormous living room with half a dozen comfy couches, a futuristic kitchen, a mini movie theatre and a game room stocked with the latest video games. Rosie also saw the gym which had padded walls and a bunch of training equipment, most of which she recognised from her martial arts classes. A side room had a full-size boxing ring and punching bags hung up, ready for use. There was an entire floor designed like a casino and Rosie caught sight of an enormous ballroom and lots of empty party rooms too.

It was very apparent that Tony Stark did not have a lot of free time to spend in these rooms. Most looked unused and the contents untouched. Overwhelmed by the grand surroundings, Rosie felt a strong desire to leave the Tower for some time and go back home. "J.A.R.V.I.S.?" She called. "Is there a way for me to go to my old house?"

"Yes, Miss Rosie. Mr. Hogan is currently free and is willing to drive you there."

"Mr. Hogan?"

"Harold Hogan is Boss' personal bodyguard and driver who is currently residing in the Tower."

"Oh, can you show me to him?"

Rosie let out a small sigh as Mary Park taped the last of the cardboard boxes shut and she took in her now bare room. "Thank you so much for coming over to help me, Mrs. Park. I didn't know anyone else who would help."

"Of course, dear. We've been neighbours for years. Even though we never talked much, this was the least I could do for such a nice young lady like you. I hope you recover soon and have a nice life with your Godfather. All the best for your future!" Mary's husband John helped Mr. Hogan load the few boxes of her personal belongings into the trunk of the car. He said that someone else would bring her books over later.

Rosie waved at Mrs. Park as she drove away, officially ending her old life with her father. Refusing to be upset, Rosie tried distracting herself by opening an e-reader app on her new phone and beginning to read a murder mystery. As he helped her get out of the car, Rosie profusely thanked Happy for his help and he replied with a gruff, "You're welcome." He typed something on his phone, and a couple of robots came, picked up her stuff and left. "Follow them to the private Elevator. J.A.R.V.I.S. will let you in." He disappeared.

Rosie went straight back to her room and slowly unpacked her clothes, putting them away in the closet, one of the little robots helping her by carrying things around. She arranged her schoolbooks on the desk along with her favourite pen-case she had made herself. Tired out by all the activity, she got out her phone and continued the novel she'd been reading earlier in the car. 

Jarvis interrupted her just as she was getting to the climax of the story, "Colonel Rhodes is back and wishes to come in, Miss Rosie."

"Let him in, please." She put down her phone.

"So, how do you like it Rosie? We tried our best to match what you wanted. Is it alright?" he asked.

Rosie nodded shyly, "It's more than what I expected. Uncle-sorry-Dad, I just wanted to ask: What am I supposed to do all day? All of you will be busy working, and I'm not allowed to go outside alone."

"That's exactly why I was a little late in coming back today evening. Based on your grades so far, you've been enrolled in Midtown School of Science and Technology's online program. They're hoping to put you into AP Classes, so you'll have to write a test and decide which classes you ant based on those results. Happy's your guardian, so you can go to school once your leg is healed or you can continue from home if you want to."

Rosie was dumbstruck. She couldn't believe that a man she had met less than a fortnight ago cared enough for her to do all this. "T-Thank y-you Dad." She stammered, reaching up to give him a quick hug. "It's always been my dream to go to a STEM School, but Arnold would never let me skip a year, let alone change schools."

Rhodey gently returned the hug and said, "No issues kiddo. I never do anything by halves. You've got talent, ambition and the stubbornness needed to succeed. I'm just giving you a tiny boost to speed up your career. Now, what about some dinner? I'm thinking along the lines of pasta..." They began making their way towards the kitchen on the floor above.

"Are the kitchen counters low enough for me to reach?"

"I think so, why?"

"I, uh, wanted to help in the cooking. So... which one do you want? Ravioli or Tortelloni?"

"What's the difference?"

Rosie opened her mouth to answer, but someone else spoke for her. "Ravioli's usually filled with cheese and Tortelloni can have veggie or meat filling. They're also shaped differently. I like Ravioli." It was Mr. Stark, who was casually sitting on the floor and fiddling with some device. "What? I'm half Italian! I know my pasta." He said defensively.

Rosie looked at her soon-to-be-legal-father. "I feel like cheese, so Ravioli?" He said.

"Ravioli it is." She went to the kitchen and began pulling out ingredients with J.A.R.V.I.S. telling her where everything was. Turning to face the two men who were standing in the doorway and watching, she raised an eyebrow. "Are you planning on helping? It'll be done much faster if you pitch in." They scrambled to help.


	5. Chapter 5

The adoption was legalised a month after she started living in the Tower and she officially became Colonel Rhodes' daughter, but was registered as Rosanna R Carter in public records for safety purposes. There was no way in hell that she was associating herself with Arnold Woods anymore. Life soon fell into a routine. J.A.R.V.I.S. woke her up early every morning and she would spend an hour or so on homework, before going to the kitchen to help make breakfast. After eating, Mr. Stark and her father would go off to work and she'd go back to her room to begin school.

By the time classes were finished, Miss. Potts would be back and Rosie would sit in the living room with Pepper as she scheduled meetings, reviewed reports, arranged contracts and made business calls. It took quite a long time for Rosie to break out of her shell and get used to interacting with Pepper, but once they broke the ice, the two got on like a house on fire. Pretty soon Rosie began helping her out by doing most of her filing and helping out with the schedule for the next day.

They sometimes watched movies together, or had a girl's night as they did each other's hair and nails while Rosie helped Miss. Potts choose clothes online. (Miss. Potts needed to keep up her image as the PA of the boss-owner of Stark Industries and surprisingly, Rosie was quite good at suggesting outfits that made her look the part.) She never had been much of a 'girly' person, but Rosie had to admit that she enjoyed these days once in a while.

Rosie was hesitant when Miss. Potts suggested it for the first time, but the older woman was insistent that she needed the break from her work. "It'll do me good to have some time away from it all. Besides, we're the only girls here, and girls always stick together, Rosie." She had said.

Rosie was having her first experiences with a maternal figure in her life. She once accidentally called her 'Aunt Pep' instead and the older woman refused to answer to anything else. Her dad joined them for movie nights sometimes, but he often had to leave for duty. Tony spent hours in his workshop and refused to come for meals until Rosie bribed him with his favourite food or Pepper ordered J.A.R.V.I.S to shut down the 'shop.

With nothing to distract her and all the resources she could want, Rosie threw herself into her classes and to her surprise, managed to pass all her AP classes with honours by the end of freshman year! She officially graduated from Midtown at fourteen and took a few months break before thinking about college while her leg healed. She took it into her hands to ensure that Tony did everything he was supposed to and helped reduce Pepper's workload further by acting as Tony's second PA. She worked from the shadows, however and no one knew she existed; they all assumed that it was Pepper when in reality it was actually Rosie. She would sit with Tony in his 'shop, reading through paperwork and scheduling his meetings while he developed his newest tech, sometimes helping him out.

Time flew by, and Rosie was soon out of her wheelchair and her cast was gone. Hobbling around with a metal brace that Tony had made for her, she began her intense sessions of Physiotheraphy. With sheer willpower and hardwork, Rosie did in one month what the Doctor had said would take three and she was able to walk around in record time. She now had a lot of free time, most of which she spent learning and researching new things.

Noticing how overworked Tony was, Rosie began reading up on robotics and programming so that she could help Tony in the lab and reduce the amount of work he had to do. In a matter of months, she had gone from not knowing anything about what Tony did, to rivaling his genius. Tony was flabbergasted when she managed to hack into J.A.R.V.I.S. and change his protocols to prove that the firewalls needed improvement. (She'd always enjoyed the coding classes at school, so joining an advanced online program a few months ago hadn't been a difficult decision.)

Pretty soon, Tony managed to get Pepper to find another assistant to take over from Rosie who was now his research partner. He kept assigning her harder and harder papers to read and understand and was shocked when she mastered the concepts in record time. Curious, he brought her an I.Q. Test and began whining like a little baby when the two of them calculated the results together.

Her I.Q. was ten points higher than his.

Despite her newfound genius, Rosie remained the shy girl who preferred the company of her books to living people. She refused to let Tony buy her designer clothes or accessories, saying that she spent most of her time in the Tower and there was no point in dressing up. Therefore, Tony bought her loads of books, both novels and academic books, which Rosie loved reading.

Tony guessed that she might have some form of photographic memory which helped her learn stuff so quickly, and always acted like a pouty three year old when she solved the issues with his inventions faster than him. They bonded over the hours they spent in the lab and Tony began to spend more time with Pepper, Happy and Rhodey. He officially became "Uncle Tony" after his long-overdue first movie night. They had a lot of fun dissecting the science jargon in the films and pointing out all the scientifically impossible things that happened in it.

Her dad, being overprotective, refused to let his daughter out in public without her being capable of holding her own against trained agents, despite her being a black belt at Taekwondo. Yuki Chang, one of S.H.I.E.L.D's top agents and a skilled martial artist was among the few Tony counted as friends and knew of Rosie's existence. She had offered to teach Rosie how to fight when the doctors had deemed her leg healed enough to withstand the strain. Rosie's superior memory and observation skills helped her recognise patterns in her mentor's attacks and notice the minute cues that gave away her next move. She found herself capable of holding her own against the older woman and was soon quite good at a mixture of Karate, Taekwondo and Kickboxing. She even learnt how to fight with knives!

Once her overprotective dad let Rosie go outside, the first thing she did was go to the VA and sign up for the sessions held to teach people how to deal with family members who had PTSD. She had noticed Uncle Tony's flashbacks and panic attacks despite his best efforts to hide them and was determined to help him. A man named Samuel Wilson was in charge of her group which consisted of around twenty people. Rosie was the youngest there, but she didn't let it faze her.

She paid complete attention in every session and made loads of notes, using the internet to increase her knowledge. By the end of the two-month sessions, Rosie was confident in her abilities and hacked into J.A.R.V.I.S once again to set up new protocols that would alert her every time Tony showed symptoms of panic attacks or went into a flashback. J.A.R.V.I.S was happy enough to help her. He even informed her that _"Boss suffers from anxiety as well, Miss Rosie. He hides away in his lab until the attacks pass. He has requested that it be kept secret, but I am concerned for his mental health."_

She never said anything to Tony, but the next time J.A.R.V.I.S gave her an alert, she rushed off to his lab and helped him calm down. He tried to deny it, but her best puppy-dog eyes had him relenting and admitting that he had PTSD. "I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to, Uncle Tony. I've uploaded quite a lot of protocols that tell JARVIS how to handle certain situations, so you can talk to him if you want to. Heck, start a video log, or maybe a journal? Whatever it is, please don't bottle up your feelings all the time. It's not good for you, Uncle Tony, please listen to me. PTSD doesn't make you weak; it's proof of the fact that you were strong enough to survive something traumatic that caused all the panic attacks."

And it had worked! He let her calm him down, despite refusing to tell her what had happened. "It's not something a teenager should hear." She didn't press him, knowing that he spoke to J.A.R.V.I.S about his experiences. She was happy that he was opening up to someone. With a little bribing and cajoling, he'd even agreed to self-defense lessons with Happy. (A combination of "Please, Uncle T? I'll be really happy if you can defend yourself without the armor. I won't have to worry about your safety all the time then." and her best puppy eyes had resulted in Tony caving in to her demands.)

\------------------------- 

About a year after Rosie moved into the Tower, she noticed that Uncle Tony was acting weirdly. He was shutting himself up in his lab more often and not allowing her inside. Pepper told her one girl's night that he was distancing himself from his position as CEO which was increasing her workload. He missed four movie nights in a row and Pepper said that they hadn't had a date in long time. Both of them were worried for the genius, but with him actively avoiding them, neither was able to figure out what the matter was. J.A.R.V.I.S was worryingly silent as well, which meant that Tony had banned him from saying anything. 

Out of the blue, Tony announced that he was shifting to his Malibu home. Rosie decided to go with him, since she didn't have anything else to do, unlike her dad and Pepper. Her dad had tried to get her to stay at the Tower, but she retaliated with, "You know that there's something wrong with Uncle Tony and so do I. It's not good for him to be alone when he's got something on his mind. We both know that you and Aunt Pep can't shift, so logically, I'm the only other person left. And before you say it, Happy doesn't count. Uncle Tony would never ever open up to him about anything. I'm going, and you can't stop me."

"What about your training, then?" He asked, rubbing his forehead in frustration.

"Yuki's going deep undercover for at least three months, starting next week. After that, she's got newbies to whip into shape. She's not expecting to be free until early next year, so she's already given me instructions on what to do for that time."

"What if there's an emergency?"

Rosie laughed and tapped her high-tech bracelet, projecting a hologram around her. Within seconds, Rosie was encased in a smaller, holographic version of the Iron-Man suit. She grinned at her dumbstruck father, making jazz hands, "Surprise!"

"Y-Y-You have a suit? When did Tony-"

"That's the thing. Uncle Tony doesn't know I have it. After spending all that time fixing bugs in his suits, I pretty much figured out how to make one for myself with J.A.R.V.I.S's help. It doesn't have all those fancy missiles and weapons, but the repulsors work. I added a few knives and Yuki promised to give me a gun once she taught me how to use one. J.A.R.V.I.S is fabricating the suit as we speak." Rosie waited with bated breath for the verdict.

"Fine, I guess you can go. But if I ever feel that you're in danger, you're coming straight back here, suit or no suit. Understood?"

"Sir, yes sir!" She gave him a sloppy salute and a hug. "I'm gonna miss you, Dad."

"Same here, shrimp. Now come on, Happy's waiting."

Rosie was soon sitting in an Audi and being driven to the landing strip that Tony owned. When the private jet was in the air, she made small talk with Happy, who had given her his grudging approval after she pinned him down less than two minutes into their first spar. She suspected that his grumpiness was his way of showing that he cared, and didn't call him out on it. "Are you staying with us, Happy?" she asked.

"Mostly. Boss gave me a room, but I'll need to leave to supervise some activities at SI."

"Oh, then you'll continue his lessons?"

"I will. Besides, you'll be there all the time to babysit." He cracked a small smile.

Rosie couldn't help but agree with him. Most people believed that Tony Stark was an aloof, unapproachable man, but she was among the select few who had seen his other side.

Keeping him company was a lot like babysitting. You had to always have an eye on him to make sure that he didn't accidentally blow something up or drag him to the kitchen to eat and impose bedtimes to stop him from working in the workshop for days without sleep. Rosie recalled the time when she had fallen asleep in the 'shop after working for four days straight while holding a lit blowtorch in his hand and nearly set his hair on fire. Thankfully, Dum-E had covered him in extinguisher foam before anything blew up. He was so tired that he didn't even wake up when he was covered in foam!

Happy interrupted her thoughts with a "Welcome to 10880, Malibu Point, kid."


	6. Chapter 6

Rosie thought that she was used to Tony's lavish properties-after all, she lived in one-but this house managed to render her speechless for a minute. It was built right on the edge of a cliff which went down to the sea. The house itself was massive and oozed luxury with its high tech look and posh exterior and any doubts that Rosie had about coming here vanished. It was not advisable to leave Tony all alone in such a huge place with only his J.A.R.V.I.S and the bots for company.

As soon as she stepped inside, J.A.R.V.I.S. greeted her, _"Welcome to the Malibu Residence, Miss. Rosie. Boss is in the workshop and asked not to be disturbed. Would you like me to guide you to your room?"_

"Yes, please."

After setting out the few belongings she had brought with her, Rosie made her way to the room next to Tony's workshop where he kept his previous models of the suits in glass cases. He had listened to her concerns about having back-up suits just in case some got damaged, so there were now two working models of each version of Iron Man, bringing the total number of suits to 10. Most of them did not have any weapons, but they were connected to J.A.R.V.I.S. Rosie broke into the suits' coding once by one and added a new protocol to allow J.A.R.V.I.S to control the suits on his own if she gave him a particular access code.

Rosie hoped there wouldn't be an circumstance where it was needed, but it was always better to be prepared. The Senate hearing had shown her that people were attempting to recreate the tech. Sure, what had been shown had been a bust, but it was always possible that someone would figure it out and chances were really high that they would use it for nefarious purposes.

It took her ages to change the coding and check that everything was hunky-dory. Dead tired with her long journey and hours of intense concentration, she collapsed on a couch in the living room and switched on the T.V. Putting on the newest Star Wars movie, she got drowsier and drowsier until she finally fell asleep, curled up in a corner of the couch.

She stirred slightly when she felt herself being moved and opened her eyes a tiny crack to see Uncle Tony carrying her back to her room. He had evidently just come out of the workshop, seeing that he smelt of oil, grease and smoke and was wearing one of his grease-stained 'work' shirts. However, it was his uneven breathing that concerned her. He seemed to be having difficulties inhaling and exhaling, kind of how people with broken ribs did, but he didn't have any broken ribs at the moment, did he?

Her head was resting on his collarbone, so she could see the side of his neck quite clearly without him noticing that she was awake. Her half-lidded eyes saw something really dark both on his neck and shoulder. She squinted her eyes a little and tried to figure out what she was seeing. It looked as if someone had drawn lines on his neck with black ink or something... Eh, it was most probably motor oil that he managed to spill on himself.

Her eyes were drooping again by the time he gently laid her down on the bed and tucked her in. Rosie felt a small kiss on her forehead, and heard him whisper, "Sleep well, kiddo. Don't end up becoming a mess like me, okay?" Before the light was switched off and she heard the door close. Despite her valiant efforts to stay awake and confront Tony, Rosie's exhaustion won and she felt herself falling asleep once again.

\------------------------------ 

Over the next few weeks, Rosie tried her best to find out what was wrong with Tony, but all her efforts were in vain. Tony was acting even more recklessly, with even lesser regard for his personal safety than before. He kept to the workshop, ignoring all safety and health precautions, even going as far as setting up strong enough firewalls to prevent her from hacking into JARVIS to be able to come into the workshop. Every few hours, she would leave a tray of food outside the door and ask J.A.R.V.I.S to inform Tony to eat. The trays would mostly be empty the next time she came, but she never even got a glimpse of Tony for three full weeks.

One fine day, as Rosie was lounging on the couch and talking to MARLENE, Tony just walked up to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of some drink from his alcohol cabinet. She was surprised by that. Despite his reputation as an alcoholic, she had seen him drink only a handful of times in the past year and that too when under high levels of stress. Now, he'd appeared upstairs for the first time in weeks and the first thing he does is drink?

Something bad must have happened for him to resort to alcohol again. He turned, and Rosie got a look at his neck, which was completely normal. No creepy black lines. Rosie couldn't figure out what was causing those black marks she'd seen the other day. Now, she wasn't even sure whether she had actually seen those marks in the first place. Maybe she had imagined it in her half-asleep state. Uncle Tony was fine, he was just working on some super-secret project that he can't tell me about... Yeah, that's what's happening.

"Uncle T? I've been working on an A.I and it would help a lot if you could take a look at it and give some advice."

He joined her on the couch, and held out his hand for the tab, drink still in the other hand. Scrolling through her meticulously written lines of code, he pointed out some areas where improvements could be made and gave her a few tips as well. "If you want to, you can have a look at some of my earlier drafts of J.A.R.V.I.S. They should be there somewhere... Hey J, do you know where it is?"

_"Of course, Boss. I can download the data to Miss Rosie's device right now if she wants."_

"It would be a lot of help if you do that, Jar. Thanks!" She said.

Tony chuckled, "You're the only person I've ever seen that thanks an A.I. I've gotta get back to work, but I'm rooting for you, kid. You can do it." He got up to leave, but Rosie grabbed his wrist.

"You can't just leave like that after weeks of ignoring everyone! I'm gonna need an explanation, Uncle Tony!"

He didn't reply.

"Aunt Pep was almost in tears the last time we had a girls' night. She kept thinking that she had overstepped her boundaries as a PA and that you shifted here to get away from her! Dad's thinking that you're staying away from everyone because you're mad at him! Happy actually started talking to me, coz he doesn't have a job to do as your bodyguard with you staying in your lab or workshop all the time!"

Hesitating, she continued, "Or is it something I did? Are you mad at me? I shouldn't have distracted you from your work so much and I'm sorry for being in your way, Tony. Do you want me to leave? I-"

Tony put his glass down and gave her a hug. "Hey, I'm not mad at you. I could never be mad you, short-stack. I'm not mad at anyone else either, okay?"

He paused for sometime, interlacing his fingers together as he gathered his thoughts, "Gosh, I'm bad with emotions. It's-It's just that, ugh, how do I put it? Umm... I started working on an important project back at home, it took up quite a lot of time, and I, uh wasn't supposed to tell you what I was doing? So, I didn't let you in the lab. I wasn't getting very far with it, so I decided to move here. This was where I made my first proper suit, and I thought that being in my original workshop might help me."

"W-why didn't you say that, then?"

"It never entered my head that all of you would think I'm angry with you. I just needed space, I didn't think I needed to explain that."

"And now?"

"Now, I've finished that project, but I like it here. I don't want to move back to the Tower. No paparazzi, less polluted air and less work."

"What do you mean, less work? Aren't you still the CEO of SI?" Rosie asked, curious.

"I'm thinking of turning it over to Pepper, actually. I've never liked all those stuffy meetings with the idiotic managers who always assumed that they could one-up me. I think that both of us can agree that Pepper's better at it than I am." He gave a small smile.

"Yeah. She's scary and a total badass who likes the cutthroat side of the business better. I think Aunt Pep will make a great CEO."

Tony laughed, "You've summed up Pepper perfectly. I'm sorry that I couldn't make you two co-CEO's or something. Legal wouldn't let me put in a clause about you taking over half of Pepper's job when you're old enough to."

Rosie was dumbstruck. "Are you serious? ME? The co-CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world?"

"You would have done a great job!"

"Hell no. Uncle Tony, I might have a high I.Q, but my social skills are in the low twenties. Pissing off potential business contacts and investors is a bad idea. You did the right thing in letting Pepper do it. She's gotten used to the limelight and doesn't mind it as much as I do. Frankly speaking, I'd probably have a heart attack if you told me to talk to a reporter, forget about a press conference. I'm better suited to staying in the shadows and helping by inventing stuff in your lab, so I'd love to keep doing that."

He seemed rather relieved that she wasn't mad at him. "You know, most people wouldn't say no to being CEO of a Fortune-500 company."

"That's the thing, you see. I'm not most people."

After their little talk, things went back to normal, or they almost did. Rosie felt that Tony was still hiding something from her, but she never confronted him about it. He had the right to keep secrets. Deciding to abandon that issue in the absence of further evidence, she helped Tony plan the surprise announcement that Pepper was going to be the new CEO.

About a week later, as Rosie sat and watched Tony have his boxing lesson with Happy, there was a call from Pepper. She answered it, seeing that the two men were busy. "Hey Pep? What's up?"

_"Is Tony with you?"_

"Yeah. We're in the training room. He's having his self-defence lesson with Happy. LEFT HOOK, TONY! NOW, RIGHT JAB! Ugh, for all his genius, he fights like an idiot. He'll need a lot more time to improve."

_"What about your classes?"_

"Holiday. Why did you call, Pep?"

_"The notary's here. We're going to need his signature on some papers to finalise the transfer of power."_

"Ooohhh... I can see it now, Virginia Potts, CEO of Stark Industries. In your face, you sexist morons!"

A chuckle, _"I'm coming right now. We're nearly at the door."_

"I'll have J.A.R.V.I.S let you in."

 _"See you."_ She hung up.

"Jar, can you let Aunt Pepper and whoever's with her in?"

_"Of course, Miss Rosie."_

A few minutes later, Pepper walked in. "The notary's here! Can you please come sign the transfer paperwork?"

Tony, being his sarcastic self, answered, "I'm on Happy time!" before elbowing the man in the face.

Happy was pissed, "What the hell was that?"

"It's called mixed martial arts. It's been around for three weeks."

"It's called dirty boxing, there's nothing new about it." Happy retorted, looking at her as if for support. 

Rosie shrugged, "Sorry, Happy, but I don't give a shit about how Tony fights as long as he manages to keep himself safe."

Just as Tony opened his mouth for another sarcastic comment, a woman with reddish-brown hair walked in. She seemed surprised to see Rosie there, but she quickly schooled her expression to an emotionless one again. Pepper called out, "I promise this is the only time I'll ask to sign over the company."

Tony laughed, "Maybe I should have gone with my earlier decision and given it to the kid. She wouldn't have been so bossy about it. Whadd'ya say, Rosie? I still haven't signed the papers. You've still got a chance." He asked her, grabbing the disgusting energy drink that he was guzzling by the litre nowadays.

"Not interested. I can't do world domination if I've got a company to run. You know how it is." Rosie wasn't sure where the snarky comments were coming from, but she enjoyed their banter, especially after the last few weeks of him avoiding her.

"I get it. Don't want anything dragging you down, huh?"

The woman spoke up, looking annoyed at being completely ignored, "I need you to initial each box."

Happy smacked Tony upside the head when he turned to look at the woman, "Never take your eyes off-" Rosie watched, biting her lip to stop herself from laughing out loud as Tony kicked Happy and he went crashing into the side of the ring. "That's it, I'm done!" he announced, stepping out of the ring. Rosie let out a small giggle at Uncle Tony's antics, recognising his full-on diva mode. "What's your name, lady?" He asked the notary.

"Rushman, Natalie Rushman." That caused a little warning sign to pop up in Rosie's head. Most people did not introduce themselves like James Bond, unless they've gotten used to being called by their last names. She suddenly had a flashback to all the actresses who played MI6 agents in the movie. Perfect posture, hair groomed to perfection, on spot makeup, athletic build... Natalie Rushman seemed a lot like them. It might just be the movies speaking, but Rosie began to doubt Miss. Rushman. People who worked in the field of law needed good poker faces, but a completely emotionless one like this woman?

She decided to keep an eye on the woman, just in case she was not who she claimed to be. Rosie spent a lot more time analysing people before she trusted them. Call her paranoid, but after what happened with Arnold, she didn't trust people very easily.

She watched as Tony asked Natalie to step into the ring and told Happy to give her a lesson. When she heard that Natalie knew how to fight, Rosie asked if she could referee the fight, recognising the 'I'm-sick-of-this-nonsense' expression on the woman's face. Happy agreed and Rosie got off the chair she was sitting on and went to stand next to the ring, too far to hear what Tony and Pepper were saying. Feeling a stab of pity for Happy, Rosie watched as Natalie turned her head to talk to Tony and Happy said, "Rule number one, never take eyes off your opponent."

He swung his arm, but before he could hit her, Natalie grabbed his hand, locked her legs over his neck and flipped him over her head. Happy landed with a loud thud, and gave a tiny groan. This caused major alarm bells to go off in Rosie's head. That move was definitely not something a notary should be able to pull off. Rosie knew how difficult the move was, having never been able to pull off a simpler version of it to date. "Oh my god! Happy?" Pepper exclaimed.

Deciding to test the woman, Rosie asked politely, "Miss Rushman? Do you mind giving me a few tips? I'd love to be better at self-defense." Natalie raised an eyebrow, before looking over at Tony and Pepper, as if asking for permission.

Tony made a go-ahead gesture, and Pepper called out, "Do your best, honey!" Rosie grinned, before tying up her hair in a ponytail and jumping into the ring.

Natalie looked her up and down before asking, "Have you got any training before?"

"Yes I have."

"Then how about a small spar, after which I can give you a few tips on your form?"

"Sure!"

They circled around each other cautiously, keeping an eye out for weaknesses, and Rosie noticed the almost imperceptible surprise in Natalie's face as she took in her perfect stance and movements. She saw the tiny twitch the other woman made, exactly the same as she had done earlier while fighting with Happy and realised that she was trying to pull off the same move again. Ducking down just in time, Rosie grabbed her opponent's legs and forced them off of her neck mid-flip to land upright. She faked a punch to the woman's stomach and instead landed a butterfly kick to her face when her guard was down. Natalie was quick to recover and retaliated with a series of jabs and punches that Rosie recognised. It was one of the classic combinations taught in mixed martial arts. The actual one, that is. Not Tony's version.

This was one of the first things that Yuki had taught Rosie to overcome, and Rosie executed the counter-moves perfectly, muscle memory taking over. Not a single move hit her where it was supposed to. As soon as the last spinning kick ended, Rosie retaliated with a roundhouse kick to Natalie's abdomen and a left hook to her head at the same time. Quickly executing a backflip over the woman, Rosie swiped at her legs from behind, causing the woman to fall to her knees.

However, Natalie recovered quickly and used some move that Rosie had trouble recognising to gain the upper hand. In a mere few seconds, Rosie was lying on her stomach, both her arms pinned behind her back and Natalie's knee pressing down on her shoulder. Rosie's theory had been proved: Natalie Rushman, if that was even her name, was definitely a trained Agent of some kind.

Natalie got off of her and offered Rosie a hand, helping her up. "You're technique's really good, but your body language is giving away a lot of what you're thinking. Maybe focus a little on that? And since you're not very big, I would suggest that you train to be faster and more flexible, so that you can get the drop on someone without them realising. Brute strength won't be on your side, so you'll have to be fast enough to evade any attacks while at the same time retaliating."

Despite Rosie's misgivings against the woman, she had to admit that Natalie's advice was sound. "Thank you, Miss Rushman. It was nice sparring with you." She jumped out of the ring, sweating a little. Happy clapped her on the back, "You did good, kid. All that time training is paying off, huh?"

Pepper gave her a hug. "You've improved so much! I'm happy you decided to stay here on holiday."

"Thanks Aunt P," Rosie said, loud enough for Natalie to hear. She knew that the woman was definitely going to try and find out who she was. Better she thought that Rosie was related to Pepper for the time being. Maybe she would tell Natalie the truth once she had a better read on the woman, but not today.

Just then, Tony spoke up. "Guess what, girls?"

"What?" Rosie and Pepper snapped at the same time, annoyed at him for spoiling their little moment.

"I'd like you to meet my new P.A, Natalie."

Rosie hated Tony impulsiveness at times and this was definitely among the top 5 incidents. Minimal to no background check, just saw her and hired her? Rosie wanted to yell at him and knock some sense into his head, but she decided to find out more about this Natalie Rushman before accusing her of anything. She remembered what Arnold had said about her mother working in S.H.I.E.L.D and Tony had mentioning in passing that Yuki did too. This led to her decision that she was going to try and hack into their files to see if they had anything on Natalie. Till then, it was better to stay on her good side.


	7. Chapter 7

'Natalie Rushman' was annoyed at her boss for giving her this mission. She had no interest in working for Stark even if it was to keep an eye on him. She was among the best agents he had! Why the hell was she babysitting the bratty billionaire? Natalie had protested the assignment, but it had all been in vain. Her boss had stood firm on the mission.

That was how Natalie found herself getting into a car with Miss. Potts, to-be-CEO of Stark Industries. Holding a small briefcase containing the papers Stark was supposed to sign, Natalie smoothed the wrinkles in her blouse as the car drove on. "Thank you for coming out all this way just to get the papers signed." The other woman smiled at her.

"It was not a problem, Miss Potts. I would like to think that congratulations are in order."

She laughed. "Thank you. But please, call me Pepper."

"Where are we going, Pepper?" Natalie asked, wanting to know where Stark had disappeared off to.

"The Malibu house. Tony moved there a few weeks ago. I would like to remind you of the NDAs you signed when you started working with us and that the consequences for revealing any information you find will be severe."

This did nothing to help with Natalie's curiosity, and she began mentally hypothesising about what exactly was going on in the Malibu home of Tony Stark. Sure, she knew that Stark worked on many high-level projects that were kept secret in order to prevent industrial espionage, but she had read the NDAs before signing them and one clause had piqued her interest. It specified that she would not speak to anyone about any person or persons that she met while working with Mr. Stark, no matter who they might be.

Did that mean that there was some secret person living with Stark? Maybe he had a child? Or was it another girlfriend?

Natalie was interrupted from her thoughts by Potts saying, "We're here. If you'd excuse me, I have to make a call."

"Of course."

Potts turned her back to Natalie as she made the call. Natalie didn't bother to listen in; it wasn't her job to know about everything that happened in Potts' life, after all. She was here only for Stark.

Potts hung up, and turned to Natalie. "Tony has an A.I installed, his name is J.A.R.V.I.S, and he'll let us in." Natalie gathered her papers, getting out of the car after the other woman. As soon as they entered the door, a voice greeted them. _"Welcome, Miss Potts. Boss is in the training room. Would you like to go down there?"_

"Yes. And this is Miss Rushman. She's here to finalise the transfer of power." The woman walked off, leaving Natalie in the hallway.

 _"Miss Rushman, please present identification to the scanner."_ J.A.R.V.I.S said.

Natalie held up her employee pass, _"ID confirmed. Please step through the metal detector, Miss Rushman."_ After she did, J.A.R.V.I.S confirmed, _"No unauthorised materials. Welcome to Malibu, Miss Rushman. Please follow the guiding lights to the training room."_ A row of lights lit up on the floor, and Natalie did as she was asked to, taking in as much of the building's layout as she could. 

She walked into a room that which screamed "Training Room". It had padded walls, punching bags and gym equipment littered the area and there was an honest-to-god boxing ring in the middle, where Stark was facing off with another man.

But what surprised her the most was the girl sitting on a desk and laughing. She was wearing a simple outfit consisting of black tights, a grey "Girl Power" T-shirt and a pair of gym shoes. Natalie was thrown off by this casual look. She was obviously not an employee. Did Stark really have a daughter? Even though there wasn't any resemblance she could see, that hypothesis seemed quite likely.

Quickly wiping the surprise off of her face, Natalie returned to the conversation where Stark was offering the company to the kid who she learnt to her surprise had been his first choice. She hid a smile at the girl's snarky comment and told Stark, "I need you to initial each box."

Stark swaggered down to her and asked, "What's your name, lady?"

Annoyed, she replied, "Rushman, Natalie Rushman."

Surprisingly, the kid had asked for a few tips in fighting. She couldn't see any harm in it, so Natalie agreed to a small spar. She decided to go easy on the kid. Natalie had no qualms about beating up people, but the kid had done nothing to offend her. Plus, she had refused to be intimidated, which had earned her a few points in Natalie's eyes.

The mini-fight was refreshing and she was glad to help the kid with a few pointers. Maybe she could be of help to S.H.I.E.L.D when she was older?

'Aunt P' fueled Natalie's belief that the girl was somehow related to Potts. For all of Stark's abrasiveness, he was a generous man and quite close to Potts. She could see him offering the girl an opportunity to spend a few days at a posh mansion, especially since it was big enough that he could avoid her if he wanted to. Natalie had some digging to do. All she knew was that the girl was in her teens and that they called her Rosie, which was 99% a nickname, which made her job harder.

For once, she was glad that Stark made her his PA, since she would now be able to see Rosie more and get a better read on her. Natalie Rushman did not like unknowns, even if they had no effect on her mission.

\---------------------------------- 

Nearly a week after her encounter with Miss Rushman, Rosie was sitting on her bed, StarkTab in hand as she completed her final checks. She had spent quite a few days rerouting her connection to ensure that S.H.E.I.L.D could not trace anything back to her, if they ever realised that they had been hacked.

Everyone in the house had gone to Europe for a couple of days for the Monaco Historic Grand Prix, leaving her alone and free from interruptions. Rosie then strengthened the firewalls on her computer and cracked her knuckles, getting ready to break into the database of one of the biggest secret agencies in the world.

She worked her way quickly through the firewalls and algorithms meant to shut down foreign systems, subtly altering code to allow herself access to the database. In what seemed like no time, Rosie was able to gain a connection the S.H.E.I.L.D's main server without alerting anyone of the breach.

She skipped over the files containing blueprints for buildings and weaponry, lists of safehouses, inventories of weapons and other materials, names of possible recruits, details of various experiments. Digging deeper into the files, she found highly encrypted information on something called Project Insight, Project PEGASUS, Project TAHITI, and loads of other top-secret projects that were labelled Level 10 clearance.

Rosie skipped past all those, not interested enough to try and get past all the safeguards till she found what she wanted.

**'List of Active Agents'**

She opened that folder, clicking on the list of female agents and a file opened, showing her more than four hundred names along with headshots of the agents. Scrolling through them, she found a picture of a familiar redhead. The link opened the woman's extremely long profile. "Natasha Romanoff, alias Black Widow alias Natalia Alianovna Romanova," she read.

Romanova? She was Russian? Rosie would never have guessed, as the woman's accent was purely American. She must be a damn good spy if she could shed personalities that easily.

The 'history' portion of it was mostly redacted except for handwritten notes by some agent named Coulson, which read, _'Brought in by Agent Clint Barton. Loyal to S.H.E.I.L.D. Possible Recruit for the Avengers Initiative.'_ There was a list of missions that she had carried out which seemed never ending. A lot of them were infiltration and information gathering, but she did catch a few assassinations in the middle.

Assassinations! Natasha Romanoff was a fricking assassin who'd been sent to SI? Rosie's blood boiled as she thought of all the innocent people that had been in contact with a goddamn assassin who had apparently defected from Russia. She got to the part which read, _"Status: On Duty"_. Clicking on this link took her to another file, which needed a password to unlock it.

Rosie smiled, having already generated a master password that worked like a charm for low-level files. After all, mission records were considered low level. "Surveillance on Anthony Edward Stark. Currently undercover as Natalie Rushman. No difficulties reported. Profile on Anthony Stark is being prepared." It looked harmless, but Rosie was not going to trust a spy before she had covered all her bases. What exactly was the Avengers Initiative that Romanova was suited for?

After a little more digging, she found the file on it.

It was an idea to bring some of the best heroes together to form an elite team to deal with high-level threats. The group was currently called the 'Avengers' and there was a short list of nine possible recruits. Six were S.H.E.I.L.D agents, including Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton. The other three were Tony Stark, Captain America and Dr. Bruce Banner.

Rosie had a small fangirl moment when she read Dr. Banner's name. He had seven fricking PHD's, for god's sake! She had read some of his work on Nuclear Physics and Gamma Radiation. His ground-breaking research about the mutations in the human body caused by radiation had helped massively in the search for a cure for cancer. He was the Hulk, A.K.A the green monster that had smashed through Harlem a few days ago? Rosie had no idea what to think about it. As for Captain America, Rosie wondered if they were planning to revive the name using someone else. It was a good idea, but she didn't know if it would work.

Just as she was going to exit the database, Rosie remembered something.

Her mother had been a S.H.E.I.L.D agent. There should be a file on her as well. She poked around for a bit, until she found a folder labelled, 'MIA or Deceased Agents' Rosie didn't bother checking how many were there in the folder, she did not want to know. Typing in 'Marlene Carter' she held her breath and pressed 'Enter'. Only one file popped up. 'Marlene Carter, KIA.' The death date was about ten years ago.

The file was quite big, and a link caught Rosie's eye. 'Unique Abilities'. Clicking on it, Rosie's mouth fell open as she read what was in there. Her mother had been Telekinetic, meaning she could move objects with her mind. Telepathic Abilities? She could read/control other people's minds?

So that was why Arnold had raised her in hopes that she would inherit such abilities. Rosie shuddered to think what he would have done to her if she'd gotten mind-reading powers. The file said that Marlene's powers had surfaced at the age of twelve, so Arnold must have assumed that Rosie's would too. He'd then given up on her when she turned thirteen and showed no signs of developing telepathy.

Now that she thought about it, though, Rosie felt that she might have gotten powers too. Maybe her insanely high I.Q and eidetic memory was a weakened form of her mother's mutation? Huh. There was a folder labelled, 'Family' and Rosie opened it, curious to know if she had any more blood relatives.

It showed a family tree, and Rosie saw that her mother's father was shown as the younger brother of Margaret 'Peggy' Sousa nee Carter, which she had expected, but she had no idea that Great-Aunt Peggy had founded S.H.I.E.L.D. There was no record of Rosie's mother's marriage either, just a line of text saying that her daughter, whose father was unknown, did not survive past infancy. Rosie had no idea how her existence had been so carefully erased or even why. Why had her mother given her friends the impression that her daughter had died as a baby?

Marlene had no siblings, and no other relatives other than Sharon and three of Aunt Peggy's kids who had no idea about SHIELD and lived in the UK. To her surprise, Sharon was also a S.H.E.I.L.D agent, listed as 'Agent 13' and was currently on an undercover mission. "That explains a lot about her reluctance to let me live with her and why she visits so rarely." Rosie realised.

Rosie's head reeled with all the new information she had found, and she decided to exit the database before she found anything else that gave her a heart attack. She had had enough revelations for the time being. Just before getting out of the system, however, Rosie had an idea. Based on how outdated the original programming was, she deduced that no one had bothered to update it for years. She subtly added in some of her own code that would alert her whenever someone tried to break into the secure S.H.E.I.L.D files and added in an auto-destruct sequence if someone other than her accessed that part of the coding.

Slumping back against her pillows, Rosie suddenly felt exhaustion take over and she realised that she had been typing away for more than ten hours continuously and it was almost midnight. Setting aside the device, she snuggled down into her bed and fell asleep.

The next morning, she awoke to news reports about a fight between Iron Man and a guy with electrified whips in the middle of the race. The dude Tony had been fighting ha somehow managed to make a rudimentary version of his suit and had used the arc reactor to power the whips, making it that much more effective. Scared by how much damage had been caused, both to the surroundings and the suit, Rosie asked MARLENE to call Pepper.

"Pepper? Are you okay? I saw the news about what happened yesterday." 

_"Don't worry, we're fine. Tony took him down before anyone got seriously hurt."_

"Did Tony decide to drive his own car in the race?"

A sigh sounded across the phone, _"He did. I don't know why he's acting like this, but it's worrying me."_

"Same here, Pep. When are you guys coming back?"

_"Within the next couple of days, but damage control will be massive."_

"Okay. You better get to work. I won't keep you any longer."

_"Thanks, honey. Love you."_

"Love you too Aunt Pepper." She hung up.


	8. Chapter 8

Everyone came back within the next two days, as promised, but Pepper, Romanova and her dad were all incredibly busy putting out fires caused by the incident in Monaco. (Apparently, Pepper had found Romanova more suitable as an assistant than Tony, which did not help Rosie's concerns about the spy.) Sure, Tony had declared that no one else would have his tech for the next twenty years at the Senate hearing, but he'd been proven wrong by the maniac in Monaco. She was pretty sure that SI stocks would have plummeted like crazy by all the combined events of the last week, so Pepper wouldn't have any more free time in the near future.

Her dad had stopped by to say hi, but couldn't stay long either as he'd had to go and convince National Guard not to bulldoze over the property and take away all of Tony's suits. Rosie did understand, but she was worried as well. She had planned to tell all three of them and Happy about Romanova at the same time, but that was definitely not happening now.

Swallowing her nervousness, Rosie went down to Tony's workshop and knocked on the glass partition. "Hey Tony? Mind letting me in?"

He buzzed her through without looking away from the screen where J.A.R.V.I.S was running a search.

Rosie hesitantly sat down beside him, laying a hand on his arm. "Uncle Tony? Could you, um... initiate lockdown in the 'shop for a few minutes? I've got something to tell you."

"Lockdown?" He asked dully, looking as tired as he did after a three-day binge in the workshop. There was a huge bruise on one side of his face that was thrown into sharp relief when he turned to face the light.

"Yeah. I'm not sure if you already know, but if you don't, you have to hear this."

He stared at her for a few seconds, before making up his mind. "Jarvis, Initiate Code Lockdown. Full blackout. Nothing in or out."

The shutters closed over the glass and many of the beeping machines fell silent. Rosie waited till she saw the CCTV cameras in the corner power down as well before deciding not to beat around the bush.

"Natalie Rushman is a S.H.I.E.L.D agent, Tony. She's here to supposedly keep an eye on you and compile a profile or something to check your eligibility for the Avengers Initiative."

He jerked upright, all laziness gone from his posture. "Where'd you learn about the Avengers Initiative?"

Rosie looked down at her shoes when she answered, "I might have hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D?" Before he could scold her for it, she hurriedly continued, "Look, the real reason I asked for the lockdown is because Natalie's name is actually Natalia Romanova, codename Black Widow. She's an assassin and a skilled infiltrator."

Tony cursed under his breath and Rosie was only able to catch one word that sounded like 'fury'. "How far did you get into their system?"

Rosie blinked. "Um... Personnel files and mission reports?"

"Has she said anything about you?"

"Nope. I'm pretty sure she thinks that I was just visiting the last time and went back home soon after."

The relief was palpable in his voice as he said, "Good. Let's keep it that way, okay? I don't want you getting mixed up in S.H.I.E.L.D anytime soon and neither does Rhodey."

"Yeah, okay. But Tony, she's an assassin! You're letting her into your house and she's spending all her time with Pepper!"

"I'm not worried about that," he wrapped an arm around her shoulders comfortingly before explaining. "I've known about S.H.I.E.L.D for some time now and as much as I don't like Pirate, he's not gonna order a hit on me. If Romanova's file says that she's here to do a profile on me, then that's what she's here to do."

"Are you sure? I wanted to tell Dad, Pepper and Happy-"

"Don'ttellthem!" He nearly shouted, before clearing his throat and continuing, "I meant, don't tell them."

"But Tony-"

"Listen, kiddo. They've all got a lot on their hands right now and this will just add unnecessary stress. I'll handle it. Promise me that you won't tell them."

Rosie hesitated, but she trusted Tony to do as he said he would and promised to keep it to herself.

"Thanks, squirt. You know I love you, right?" The look on his face was a little unsettling as Rosie replied, "Love you too Uncle T," before leaving.

\------------------------------ 

In what seemed like no time, it was Tony's birthday. Rosie secretly fixed all the bugs in his newest suit overnight, presenting the finished piece to him as soon as he woke up on his birthday. He'd watched, open mouthed, as J.A.R.V.I.S ran a systems check on the new suit and announced that it was in perfect condition and ready for use. He's given her a big hug and thanked her, before saying that he was sorry that she couldn't attend the party that evening.

"It's fine, Tony. Not like I want to go or anything. I'll have a calm, restful night binge-watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S."

And that was what she was doing, when J.A.R.V.I.S interrupted her. _"There is an emergency in the Ballroom, Miss Rosie. Boss has commandeered a suit whilst inebriated and is currently wreaking havoc in the area. Colonel Rhodes is trying to handle the situation, but the guests are not safe. What should I do?"_

Rosie jumped up from her position lounging on the bed, and called out in a clear voice, "Jarvis, code Emergency. Authorisation 1-3-8-0-9-3-2, the squirt is a nerd."

_"Voice activation and code is accepted. Activating the suits."_

She focused her attention on the StarkTab in her hands and began giving out commands to the suits and helping J.A.R.V.I.S get the guests to safety while her dad and Tony duked it out. J.A.R.V.I.S' unflappable tone echoed through the suits as he asked the guests to not panic and leave for the exit in an orderly fashion.

The suits protected the fleeing guests from flying shards of glass and other debris while leading them to safety. Rosie kept an eye out for Romanova and Pepper, and quickly spotted them, flying one suit over to pick Romanova up and bring her to the living room, while another protected Pepper from shards of glass that were flying around before lifting her up and bringing her to Rosie's room.

Security took over the situation once the guests were outside, allowing Rosie to depower the suits. Pepper stared up at her with wide eyes, "You were the one who sent the suits?"

"Uh-huh. Are you hurt?"

"No, but you thought that something like this would happen?"

"I kind of expected an attack on the house that would compromise it's structure, not that Tony would do that himself while drunk. The plan did work, though."

"It did," Pepper agreed weakly. "Thanks for getting me out, kiddo."

"No probs. But I think you'd better get to bed. I'm pretty sure you'll need to do more damage control tomorrow. And before you ask, Jarvis is showing Natalie to an empty room right now."

Pepper nodded, looking mournful. "Tony's never gotten drunk since you moved in. Something made him break the streak... God, was it because he gave the company to me? I've been messing everything up-"

Rosie shook her head, "Hey, hey, hey, Pep, he made the right decision choosing you and we all know it." She gave Pepper a hug. "You're gonna do great, just calm down and stop worrying so much about it."

Pepper stumbled forward when she stood up, barely catching herself before she went sprawling. "Getting to bed does sound really good right now."

As she got ready for bed, Rosie remembered something she'd forgotten to do earlier. She knew how important the information she had found in the S.H.I.E.L.D database was, so she slowly began to gather all that she had learned, put it in a box in her mind, locked it, and shoved the box into a dark corner of her head. This was a useful skill that she had come up with, which allowed her to push memories and certain pieces of information to the back of her mind, away from her everyday thoughts.

She'd started this when the effects of her eidetic memory had her remembering absolutely everything she read and saw in a day, leaving her with horrible headaches. Shoving away information like this kept it out of her thoughts, while not fully forgetting it. It also reduced the chances of her accidentally revealing super-secret S.H.I.E.L.D stuff. She flopped down on her bed and closed her eyes, worried about what was going to happen the next day.

Rosie was shaken awake the next morning by Pepper. "I have to leave soon, so listen to me carefully. Word about yesterday has gotten around, and your dad has taken the War Machine suit off to the military to keep them from breaking into the house and taking the rest of Tony's suits. He wanted me to tell you that he's proud of what you did yesterday, but he doesn't want you living here with Tony anymore and I agree with that."

"Why?" Rosie was indignant, "You don't think that I can take care of myself?"

"It's nothing to do with that, honey. Tony's going through a rough patch at the moment and we have no clue what crazy stunt he's gonna pull next or even why. We both know he wouldn't hurt you on purpose, but there is a very big chance that you could be revealed to the press, okay? Happy's piloting a jet to the Tower today afternoon, and you're going to be on it."

"But-".

"Rosanna Carter, I want you on that jet when it leaves, so get your things together." Pepper's tone left no room for argument. "Fine." Rosie grumbled, getting out of bed. Pepper gave her a hug, "I'll try to keep you updated as much as I can, okay?"


	9. Chapter 9

About a week after the entire mess at the Expo, Romanoff somehow managed to sneak into the Tower. Rosie had been expecting it, so she wasn't too surprised when the lights flickered and security cameras in the main Living Area shut down. She merely set aside the laptop she had in her hands and waited for the woman to show up.

"Romanoff."

"I would return the greeting, but I don't know your name." The woman melted out of the shadows.

"That might have worked on me before you took down Happy, y'know? You compromised your cover for nothing. Did Tony really piss you off that much?"

She got an amused smile in return.

"But hey, I can forgive. It's Rosanna Carter, if you really wanted to know."

The spy nodded, before settling down on the couch opposite to her. "I couldn't find anything on you in the S.H.I.E.L.D database." It was a statement, not a question.

"It's thanks to my mom's efforts, actually. For whatever reason, she decided that me living in a home that wasn't very nurturing was better than S.H.I.E.L.D or her best friends knowing about me."

What the heck, she figured, Tony trusted the spy, so maybe she should too. Either way, Romanoff would be a good ally to have. Rosie had dug a little deeper into the woman's files and found old mission reports, quite a few of which were from missions where she'd partnered with her mom. "You knew her; my mom, I mean. Marlene Carter?"

That was the first time Romanoff's face showed some emotion. Her eyebrow twitched ever so slightly and her mouth opened an infinitesimal amount in shock which Rosie caught. "Yeah, that's the expression everyone else had. Mom somehow faked my death when I was just a few days old. I think I was four or something when she died - hardly remember her."

"Any ideas on why she would hide you from S.H.I.E.L.D?"

Rosie shifted uncomfortably. "A few, all of which freak me out a little. Best case is that she was afraid I'd gotten her powers or something and wanted to get me out from under S.H.I.E.L.D's fist. Worst case, there was someone after her and she faked my death to protect me, but ended up losing her life a few years later."

"So, how did you end up with Stark?"

Here goes nothing. "You ever heard about Arnold Woods? He was a big-shot lawyer at SI until a couple of years ago, when he got arrested-"

"For organizing a plot to kidnap Stark and steal the designs to his tech. He also suppressed reports about a car chase across the city."

"Yeah, that was because those kidnappers got pissed at him for double-crossing them and had the bright idea of taking a hostage to ensure the cops' co-operation."

Romanoff's eyes narrowed. "That was you, wasn't it?" she asked. "The attempted murder was you as well."

"Uh-huh. He figured I'd outlived my usefulness when I didn't get Mom's powers and decided I was in the way of his career. Tried to strangle me in my hospital bed."

"Stark saved your life. I didn't think anyone would let him take care of a kid."

Rosie laughed, "Everyone buys into his media persona too much to actually see the man underneath. Nah, it was his best friend that got custody. Mom had apparently been quite close to him and he was my Godfather. 'Uncle Rhodey' became 'Dad' when we finalized the adoption."

Romanoff fell silent for a few minutes, studying her. "You saw through my cover the very first day, didn't you?"

"You were trying too hard to keep your emotions under control and the fighting skills were way too good," Rosie shrugged. "I recognised a couple from the stuff my mentor teaches me. She said they were standard moves most S.H.I.E.L.D agents used."

"Sharon?"

"Mentor? Nah, she's not in town enough. It's Yuki Chang."

Her companion's eyebrows nearly reached her hairline. "Agent Chang."

"Didn't see that coming?"

She got a small smile, which seemed quite genuine albeit rather rare from what she'd guessed about the spy. "No, I did not. I assume you were holding back the day we fought. There was no way Chang will let any of her students be so sloppy."

"A little, but I know you were holding back a lot."

Romanoff gave her an assessing look. "You mind if I take over from Chang?"

That was unexpected. "Are you serious?"

"Your mother was a good woman. Saved my life more times than I can count. Figured I'd atleast teach the kid she went to so much pains to hide the proper way to protect herself."

"If you get Dad to agree, I'm in."

The older woman got up to left, pausing at the door to ask, "You weren't scared when I showed up."

"Nope," Rosie grinned, pulling back the sleeve of her oversized sweater to show the spy the device mounted on her wrist. "Portable taser. I could have made you drool into the carpet any time I wanted."

A much bigger smile smile flashed across Romanoff's face. "Good instincts. You can call me Nat or Tasha."

"And I'm Rosie."

Nat gave her a two-fingered salute before leaving.

* * *

Natasha did manage to convince her dad to let her have lessons. Training with Natasha was much more intense than what she'd had with Yuki. Rosie was smaller than the majority of the adult population and she'd never be able to beat anyone due to sheer strength. She would have to count on being fast enough and good enough to dodge or block their attacks and then retaliate.

Even a couple of blows landing on her would put her out of the fight, so her main focus was on building muscle while staying as lean and flexible as possible which wasn't too hard since she'd already had quite a lot of practice from her Taekwondo classes when she was younger. Natasha's fighting style was similar and she was more than capable of holding her own against dozens of opponents. Rosie knew she'd never get to that level, but she was going to try as best as she could.

Training sessions extended into strategy sessions and then conversations and eating food together. Quite soon, Agent Romanoff became Tasha and then Tasha became Auntie Tasha. Auntie Tasha was delighted when she found out that Rosie was quite competent with fighting sticks, having handled something similar in her Taekwondo classes. That meant she could immediately begin teaching Rosie to use electrified batons which were much more effective defensive weapons than a modified taser.

With her physical training going well, Rosie welcomed her time in Tony's lab where he let her tinker with his stuff and taught her ridiculously difficult concepts in record time. They very quickly realised that while she enjoyed mechanics, her skill with a computer was almost as good as Tony's already. He rather jokingly suggested that she apply for MIT, which she did.

To her shock, Rosie got the acceptance letter a week later. She was the second youngest student to ever attend MIT and the youngest ever female student, only being a few months older than Tony was when he had gone there. Her dad hadn't been very enthusiastic about it, having seen first-hand how badly Tony had been bullied at college, but he relented when he realised how important it was to Rosie. Tony was rather hesitant as well and it took her pointing out that she was neither as famous nor rich as he had been when he'd gone to college for him to agree.

She didn't make a lot of friends, considering that everyone else was at least four years older than her, but she became pretty close to her roommate Suzanne Wilson. Suzanne spoke a lot about her older brother Sam who was a war veteran, and Rosie made the connection a few weeks later when she saw a picture of the man. It was the same guy whose sessions she had attended at the VA! Suzanne was majoring in Aerospace Engineering, while Rosie chose Computer Science.

Rosie was left alone at first by the other students, but when she quickly established herself as being the smartest in her class, the bullying began. At first, she ignored the utterly juvenile teasing and name-calling, choosing to stay close to Suzanne. Even when it started to get physical and she started getting pushed around, punched and even kicked, Rosie ignored them. She was more than capable of handling herself if needed, but she knew from experience that pushing back against a bully was a bad idea.

The last blow came when a boy named Josh tried to forcibly make a move on Suzanne. Rosie, who was right beside her, realised what was happening and she blocked his arm and twisted it. He growled threateningly. "Please, be my guest. I have enough CCTV evidence of your gang picking on me to get the whole lot of you suspended for at least a month," she made her eyes big and innocent-looking. "I was just acting in self-defence, Professor. Promise." He quickly backed off, knowing she had won this round.

"Let's see if you're this cocky when off-campus. If you can beat me at hand-to-hand, I'll leave you alone for the rest of your time here, and I'll tell my friends to do so as well. If I win, you delete all of that CCTV footage right in front of my eyes."

"Fine. When and where do you want to fight?" Rosie asked, realising that if she beat him up enough, she could scare off the other bullies as well. "Friday evening, after classes, in the parking lot behind the closed restaurant. You know it?"

"I do." Rosie could practically hear him underestimating her. Most of their year turned up at the fight which was off-campus in a nearby parking lot, everyone placing bets on how badly Rosie would get beaten. No one except for Suzanne believed that a sixteen year old who was five feet three inches tall would last even a minute against a football player a foot taller and five years older than her.

Suzanne had scolded her when she had first heard of the fight, but when Rosie told her that she had black belts in two types of martial arts, she gave her a smile and replied with, "Give him hell from me."

Rosie strode confidently into the middle of the crowd and faced the bigger boy. She had kept up her training, with either Natasha or Yuki coming over on the weekends and meeting at a secluded gym. She had even met Natasha's partner, Clint Barton a few times. He'd confided his biggest secret to her a few weeks ago, and she had helped him wipe any technological traces of his family from society, even going as far as hacking into S.H.I.E.L.D to delete their information from his file. In return, he'd started teaching her how to shoot a bow and once Rosie got the physics of it, she was getting quite good at it.

Josh glared down at her, drawing himself up to his full height, obviously trying to intimidate her. Rosie had had practice though. If Natasha Romanoff's deluxe-I'll-kill-you glare left her unfazed, a college kid wasn't going to have any effect. She let out an obnoxious yawn. "Are we ever gonna get started, or will you accept defeat, Josh?" She was using one of the tactics Natasha had taught her. 'While fighting a bigger opponent, rile them up as much as you can. Angry opponents make sloppy errors which you can take advantage of.'

Without a word, Josh charged, trying to ram her full force like he did on the football field. Rosie waited until the last second before nimbly skipping out of the way. This went on for a while, her dodging him like a matador would do while fighting an angry bull, till he began tiring. Rosie quickly saw an opening and ducked under his guard to give him a hard punch to the abdomen, before following it up with a jab to his sternum. This knocked the breath out of Josh, and Rosie took advantage of his hunched position to do a spinning kick to his face.

The assembled crowd gasped loudly as Josh staggered backwards, swinging his arms wildly, trying to hit her. Rosie grabbed his arm, and using it as a fulcrum, planted a foot on the ground and flipped him over her head. There was a pin-drop silence as everyone watched Josh hit the ground with a thud, his body flying over her head in a perfect arc. Rosie might look short and skinny, but years of martial arts, an awesome instructor and good technique could do wonders.

"Are you done?" Rosie asked him.

"I've not lost a single fight until now, and I'm not going to go easy on you anymore, midget." He sneered.

"I like to think that I'm closer to hell than you are," she smirked. "It would be my genuine pleasure to introduce your ugly mug to everyone there." Josh got up, and charged, but more cautiously this time. He kept his fists up and tried to land a blow on her. Rosie knew that if he landed even a single hit on her, it would turn the odds in his favor.

She blocked all of his sloppy punches and executed a locking technique her old Taekwondo instructor had taught her. She grabbed his wrist with one hand, and bent it backwards, twisting his arm in the process and forcing him to his knees. A punch to his nose caused him to let out a groan and slump to the floor in pain. "You can tap out now." She suggested in a fake-polite voice. He did.

Letting go of his arm, Rosie dusted herself off and turned her back to him before starting to walk away. Suddenly, she heard movement behind her, and a small shriek from someone in the audience. Whipping around, she saw Josh standing up and aiming a punch at her face. Startled, she forgot to hold herself back and ducked under his punch, before punching him in the jaw with full force. To her surprise, it ended up knocking him out.

She turned to the crowd, putting on a sweet smile. "Anyone else want to have a go?" The entire group of more than a hundred older students leant away from her as if scared that she'd decide to beat them up and more than half shook their heads. "Awesome, I'd like to go back to my dorm now. I've got studying to do." The mass of people parted like the Red Sea, everyone giving her a wide berth as she walked out of the parking lot with Suzanne at her side.

As soon as they got back to the dorm, the confident expression dropped off Rosie's face, and she collapsed on to her bed. "Holy shit, that was amazing! You're gonna become a legend now." Suzanne blurted out as soon as the door was shut behind them.

"Oh god why? I did it so that everyone would leave me alone." Rosie was slowly starting to panic, the cockiness ebbing out of her.

" You didn't have to do that for me, Rosie. I could have-"

"Of course I would. I don't make friends that easily, but when I do, I stay beside them no matter what happens. It sounds really pathetic, but you're pretty much my only friend right now."

"Why? Didn't you go to school?"

"I did, but my father had strict rules and stuff, so I never could really invite people over or go to anyone else's house. They all assumed that I was being rude. Other thing was that I'm kinda scared of crowds... I spent most of my time in school sitting in the corner with the loners. They did make for good conversation, though. One of them even introduced me to martial arts. For some reason, all the teachers took a liking to me, and I was dubbed the teacher's favourite which did nothing to encourage people to talk to me."

"How did you come all the way here, then?" Suzanne sounded confused.

Rosie took a deep breath, debating on what to say. She decided to go with, "About a year and half ago, there was an um, incident, which I don't like to talk about much. It ended with my father going to prison. Since my mom died when I was four and her extended family doesn't stay in the country, I was sent to live with my Godfather. He was the one who bought me advanced books and got me the tech I needed when he realised that I was crazy good with computers."

"So you had no idea about computer programming two years ago?"

"I knew the basics which were taught in middle school, but nothing else. One of my dad's friends suggested applying here as a joke. Let me tell you, it wasn't a calm day in the house when I got the acceptance letter."

Suzanne laughed along with her, and did not question her anymore, which Rosie was grateful for. Maybe one day she'd be able to tell her friend the full story. But that explanation was enough to make their friendship even stronger.

One day, while Rosie was sitting in the Computer Lab and adding in some new features to MARLENE, one of her professors walked into the room. "Miss Carter! I must admit I didn't expect to see you here so early on a Sunday morning."

"Oh, I just wanted somewhere that had computers and was rather quiet. Do I have to leave?"

"Not at all. Might I see what you're working on?"

"O-of course, sir. This is my A.I, who I've named MARLENE. I needed to make improvements to the code. She's been glitching a little. Say hi, Marls."

_"Hello, Mr. Adams it's a pleasure to meet you."_

"An A.I? Did you code this yourself, Miss Carter?"

"Most of it, but I had help with the difficult bits."

"That is quite astounding, especially at such a young age."

"Thank you sir."

"I have a suggestion for you, Miss Carter. I have seen that the current course work is failing to challenge your skills, and you are obviously quite ahead of your fellow classmates. At MIT, we do our best to help our students reach their full potential, and sometimes offer special tutoring to especially talented students separately. This often leads to the student finishing their studies earlier than their peers, sometimes even up to a year early. Would you like to receive such tutoring?"

Rosie didn't want to be singled out even more, but Suzanne was supposed to leave a year before she was scheduled to, and Rosie did not want to spend a full year alone, when she could graduate along with her friend. "Can I talk to my guardian before making a choice?" She asked.

"Of course. In fact, if you are able to prove that you can fully program an A.I from scratch, you might even be granted a degree right on the spot."

"I don't want the degree unless I'm sure that I have earned it, sir. I'll get back to you about those sessions by tomorrow." She told him before picking up her stuff and walking out of the room.

Rosie went back to her empty dorm room and locked the door, before calling Tony.

"Uncle Tony?"

_"Rosie! How are you? How are the classes?"_

"I'm fine. I actually called because I wanted to talk to you about class. You see, I was messing around with MARLENE in an empty Lab today and one of my professors walked in..." She told him what had happened. "So, do you think I should accept that offer?"

_"That's what I did. I was able to skive a full year off my time there, and I'm quite sure you want to as well. It's not a pleasant experience when you're so much younger than the others, huh?"_

"It's not been that bad after I beat Josh up. Everyone's so scared of me that they maintain three feet distance from me all the time. It does get kinda depressing after a while. I'm glad I have Suzanne, though."

Tony laughed, _"I would have paid good money to see that fight. I mean, seriously, who else calls home and says 'I might have accidentally knocked out a guy who's a foot taller than me and seventy pounds heavier cause he was bullying my best friend'? That said, did ya go to any parties?"_

"I've heard enough stories from Dad about all the crazy stuff you did back then and I'm happy to say I haven't done anything of that sort."

_"I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be proud or disappointed, but focus on your studies and I'm pretty sure you'll be out of there ASAP."_

"I will. Tell Dad I said hi."

 _"Dum-E! Put that down-"_ The call was abruptly cut off.

Rosie laughed, having a pretty good idea of what was happening in Tony's lab with his motor-oil smoothie obsessed bots. She went out of her dorm to tell Professor Adams that she would like to join the tutoring sessions.


	10. Chapter 10

Having finished her first year at MIT, Rosie was ready to go back home to the Tower to see everyone again. It had been ages since she'd last gone home thanks to the load of extra classes the tutoring program had dumped on her head. Tony had arranged for his private jet to fly her to Manhattan. Rosie was so eager to go back home that she didn't mind his display of wealth for once. It was half-way through the short flight that her phone beeped.

"MARLENE? What is it?"

_"An external entity is trying to access classified S.H.I.E.L.D data."_

Rosie gave a small start when she heard that. "D'you know who it is?"

_"I recognised J.A.R.V.I.S' signature, Rosie."_

J.A.R.V.I.S? What the heck was Uncle Tony doing? Rosie called out to MARLENE. "Call Tony."

_"Stark."_

"Hello, Tony."

_"I'm busy now, call me later-"_

"I would like to believe that, seeing that you're trying to hack into S.H.I.E.L.D."

_"No, I'm not..."_ There was a pause, a few murmured words at the other end and shuffling before she heard the slamming of a door. Tony said, _"How the heck did you know that?"_

"You know that I've already hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D, right? Their security is laughable, so I buried some of my codes in the system. I get an alert when someone tries to hack into S.H.I.E.L.D."

_"And they still don't know you're in their systems."_

"Took a lot of patience, but it wasn't that hard."

_"When did you get into their system?"_

"The Grand Prix. You guys ditched me alone at home and flew off to Monaco."

_"That was two years ago."_

"As I said, pathetic security. Why're you trying to break into S.H.I.E.L.D today?"

_"I've been called in to help with a certain situation, but I have a feeling Fury's not telling us everything."_

"Us?"

_"I'll explain later. Kind of in a hurry right now. Do you have anything to make my work faster?"_

"Uh-huh. I can give you access to everything other than Level 10 files in about two hours. You're on your own with the rest."

_"You don't tell anyone else I asked you for help and I don't tell you dad that you hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D. Deal?"_

"Deal. Give JARVIS this code and tell him to contact MARLENE back at the Tower. She'll give you everything you'll need." Rosie rattled off a long series of numbers and alphabets which she hoped Tony was writing down. "I'll be at the Tower soon. Is anyone home?"

_"I don- Sorry, gotta go! I'll call you later, promise."_

Slightly annoyed by the abrupt end of the call, Rosie leant back in her seat and drifted off.

A few hours later, she got down from the plane and saw Happy waiting for her. "Hey Happy!" She waved, before getting into the car. "Am I staying at the Tower?"

"If you want to. Miss. Potts should be back tonight. Don't know when the Colonel and Boss will be there." He told her.

* * *

Tony gave a small smile as he saw the files download from Rosie's computer to J.A.R.V.I.S. That kid was really good, possibly better than him with computers. He was glad when he heard that she was being accepted into the special program; she could come home much sooner. Tony would not admit it to anyone, but he missed the kid. He had gotten used to seeing her huddled in a corner with a book, or helping him in the lab. He missed her bubbly nature and wonderful cooking, but most of all, he missed the kid he considered his niece.

Quickly making his way back to the room where he was earlier working with Banner, Tony got back to the dozens of algorithms on the screen. He had to put in a lot of effort not to tell Rosie that he was working with Bruce Banner. Tony could imagine her excitement when she met the scientist and could practically see her starstruck expression.

Banner interrupted his reverie, "The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract. But it's gonna take weeks to process."

Tony shook his head, "If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer Cluster, we can clock this around six hundred teraflops." He enjoyed working with Banner. Ever since Rosie had left for MIT, Tony had missed having someone of his level of intelligence to talk to.

Bruce replied with, "All I packed was a toothbrush."

That made Tony smile, "You know, you should come by Stark Towers sometime. Top ten floors, all R&D. You'd love it, it's candy land. Plus, I know a few people who'd love to meet you."

Bruce looked surprised at the offer. "Thanks, but the last time I was in New York I kind of broke... Harlem."

Tony frowned at those words. He knew that the man avoided people because of the Hulk, but he'd never seen it as a reason to prevent Bruce from doing what he wanted. Trying to convince the man, he said, "Well, I promise a stress free environment. No tension. No surprises." Despite saying this, he wanted to show Banner that he wasn't that out of control, so poked him with a mini electrical prod.

"OW!"

"HEY!" Tony internally groaned. Of course, America's righteous man had to walk in at that exact moment. Tony harboured a strong grudge for the man ever since the day Howard had told him that he would happily give Tony away if it would bring Steve Rogers back to life. Tony tried suppressing his hate, but so far the man had not done anything to improve Tony's opinion of him and from the look on his face, whatever he was going to say wouldn't be good.

It took all of Tony's willpower to not run away from the situation, leaving him to resort to snarky comments while he pulled himself back together. "You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?"

Rogers interrupted, "Is everything a joke to you?"

"Funny things are."

From there on, the conversation started to go downhill. Rogers refused to listen to him and even had the gall to insult his precious Tower! Tony had spent so long working on the Reactor that powered the tower that an insult to his Tower was an insult to him. Completely pissed off at the end of the conversation with the Super-Soldier, he unintentionally snapped at Bruce. Muttering something about taking a break, he snuck off to the secluded area where he had earlier gone to speak to Rosie. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself down before pulling out his phone and quickly messaging her.

_**Me:** I'll be back within this week. then you can help me design a proper suit for u with weapons and everything. it's time i taught u to fly 1 by urself _

_**Jr:** awesome. can't wait. be careful with whatever ur doing for shield _

_**Me:** always am, kiddo _

"Mr. Stark!" Bruce called. "I could do with some help here!"

_**Me:** duty calls. gotta go_

_**Jr.** right, duty. _ He could practically feel her eye-roll through the screen. _see u soon. Love u, Uncle T_

_**Me:** Love u too kid_

Tony returned to the lab and rejoined Bruce. The two of them worked through the night, trying to find the location of the cube. Next morning, just as JARVIS was a few minutes away from breaking into the high-security files at S.H.I.E.L.D, Fury walked in.

He looked angry, and demanded, "What are you doing, Stark?

This pissed Tony off to no end. He'd spent the whole damn night working on finding the Tesseract, despite being under no obligation to and this was how Fury was talking to him? Talk about ungratefullness. (He was just a consultant for S.H.I.E.L.D, because Fury thought that his behaviour during the palladium poisoning incident meant that he was not stable enough to be a part of the Avengers. He called himself a super-spy and judged a man on a profile written when he was dying and that too of heavy metal poisoning.)

(To his surprise, Natashalie had actually spoken in his favour in her profile. She'd written, "Iron Man: Yes, Tony Stark: Possible. Re-evaluation required due to extenuating circumstances." He suspected that Rosie and Pepper had a hand in that result, and he was grateful for that.)

"Uh...kind of been wondering the same thing about you." He replied.

"You're supposed to be locating the Tesseract."

Bruce replied, obviously annoyed, "We are. The model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile."

Tony finished the thought, "And you'll get your cube back, no muss, no fuss."

JARVIS finished breaking through to the files he wanted, which got displayed on the screen, cementing Tony's suspicion that S.H.I.E.L.D was doing something behind their backs. "What is PHASE 2?" He asked fake-innocently.

There was a loud thud and Tony turned to see a ticked-off Captain America banging a huge assault rifle on the table next to him. So he did listen to what they had spoken about earlier. Tony felt some of his dislike for the man ebb away. Rogers could be reasoned with, he just needed some time to process it on his own. "PHASE 2 is S.H.I.E.L.D uses the cube to make weapons."

He turned to Tony, with an apologetic expression, "Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow for me."

Fury tried giving an excuse, "Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean that we're..."

Tony turned the screen towards Fury, showing him the detailed weapon plans, "I'm sorry, Nick. What were you lying?"

Rogers seemed to be on Tony's side on this one. "I was wrong, director. The world hasn't changed a bit." Tony approved of this version of Steve Rogers. He was suddenly happy that both he and Rhodey had insisted that Fury not know about Rosie. God knows what Fury would have done if he had known that she managed to hack into S.H.I.E.L.D at the age of fourteen. This was the only thing that helped him get through the uncomfortable conversation that followed.

As Tony flew out to the massive engine and it felt as if everything was going down the drain, he used memories of Pepper, Rhodey, Happy and Rosie to motivate himself. He was not going down without a fight. He had people he needed to protect and he was not going to fail them. He swooped around the damaged engine, blasting off bits of damaged metal which would interfere with the spinning rotors. Taking in a deep breath, he called out to Rogers over the comms, "I'm gonna have to get in there and push."

"If that thing gets up to speed, Stark, you'll be shredded!" came the reply. Huh, he actually cared.

Tony hoped that he was putting his faith in the right man, "See that red lever? It'll slow the rotors down long enough for me to get out. Stand by it, wait for my word." He made one final circuit to check if there was anything blocking the rotors before getting in between the blades of the massive engine. Focusing full power on his boot thrusters, Tony grabbed a blade and began to push. The rotors groaned and creaked, but started to move.

Tony spent what felt like an eternity pushing the blade as the rotors began to move faster and faster. The suit display showed him that the Helicarrier was slowly leveling out, and he yelled, "Cap, I need the lever."

"I need a minute here!" What the heck? Tony was going to die in seconds if he wasn't able to get out of there. "Lever. NOW!" He said again, and thankfully the man pulled it, giving him the opportunity to fly out of that death trap. His suit was damaged and barely keeping him in the air, but Tony noticed a man aiming for Rogers and tackled him into the wall. Both of them lay there, panting from the adrenaline rush and exhaustion.

* * *

Tony was standing next to the now-empty cage and talking to Rogers, "-He had to conquer his greed, but he knows he has to take us out to win, right? That's what he wants. He wants to beat us and he wants to be seen doing it. He wants an audience."

"Right, I caught his act at Stuttgart."

"Yeah. That's just a preview, this is opening night. Loki's a full-tilt diva. He wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a monument built in the skies with his name plastered..." His blood ran cold. Stark Tower. Rosie. Tony ran off, leaving Rogers behind. He tapped the comms. "Natashalie! Romanoff! You there? Romanoff!" He desperately asked, hoping that she was still wearing her comm.

Thankfully, she was. _"What is it, Stark?"_

"Loki's coming to the Tower. That's his plan." He turned a corner. "She's there at the Tower! Just came yesterday evening!" He took deep breaths, fighting off an oncoming anxiety attack. Rosie needed him, he couldn't have an episode now and lose precious time.

There was silence at the other end, before he heard a string of Russian words, which he assumed were curses. _"You go ahead. I'll come with Barton and Rogers. If I find out that he laid a hand on her..."_

That was enough for Tony as he got into his suit and zoomed off to Manhattan. Romanoff would be there right behind him, possibly even earlier if Barton was back to normal. Both of the super spies were fiercely protective of Rosie and this would definitely make them go into full-on assassin mode. He frantically tried calling Rosie's phone, but the call never connected. He couldn't even reach MARLENE or J.A.R.V.I.S that was installed in the Tower. This did nothing to ease his alarm and he sped up even more.

* * *


	11. Chapter 11

Natasha kept her comm unit switched on as she banged her fists on the restroon door. "Get out of there right now, Barton! We've gotta get to Stark Tower!" The door opened a few seconds later, and her partner came out, drying his hands on a towel. "Why?"

" _She's_ there right now and so is Loki!" Natasha replied. She strapped on her guns and thanked god that she hadn't changed out of her suit yet. A look of confusion passed across his face, before his expression hardened just as the Captain burst into the room. "Time to go."

"We know." Natasha snapped, beyond caring if she was being rude. "Let's go get a jet."

"You can fly one?" He asked, hurrying along beside her as she marched down the hallway towards the Hangar.

"I can." Clint raised his hand.

"Got a suit?" _Durak._ Captain America? More like Captain Oblivious...

"Yeah."

"Suit up." Clint ran off to get his stuff while Natasha led Rogers off to the supply room to grab more weapons. She crammed in everything she could into the various holsters and hidden pockets in her suit. She saw the Captain grabbing a few guns as well, before he looked at her and nodded, signalling that he was done. She sprinted off towards the Hangar, where the Quinjets were stored and Clint joined them outside the huge doors.

A young S.H.I.E.L.D pilot stopped them right in front of the Quinjet. "You're not authorized to be here..."

Natasha was ready to tranq him if he delayed them anymore, but Clint held her back as Rogers handled the situation without much delay. The three of them got into the jet and Natasha stood by Clint's side as they took off from the Helicarrier. Once they were in the air and speeding along to Manhattan, Clint turned his head to look at her.

"How did you know?" he asked, and she noticed Rogers imperceptibly perk up his head, obviously wanting to know the answer as well. "I still had my comm connected. Stark told me before flying off." She answered. "He was the one who figured it out."

Rogers nodded his head, "We were standing outside the cell and talking, trying to decide why Loki had planned for that fiasco to happen, when Stark said something that led us both to realize what was happening. He ran off to find his suit while I came to get you."

Natasha acknowledged him with a nod of her head, too worried to say anything else. Clint laid a reassuring hand on her arm. "We'll be there before you know it." He lowered his tone so that the Captain couldn't hear. "She can handle herself. Besides, I'm pretty sure Stark's got a million security measures just in case."

She knew that Rosie would not be helpless, but Loki was dangerous and Natasha did not want to consider the possibility that he had mind-controlled her niece as well.

She had been very proud of the day when her only student had mastered the death-glare. It even managed to unnerve Natasha herself. Somehow, she found herself being intimidated by a tiny, shy kid who wasn't even sixteen yet and she didn't mind. Rosie was an amazing student and Natasha could see how much her training had helped increase the girl's confidence. The longer she spent with Rosie, the fewer nightmares and flashbacks she had about her time at the Red Room. Her dreams were now mostly happy ones, many of them memories of Clint, Laura and their kids or Rosie.

The girl had slowly made her way into Natasha's cold heart and had stayed there, giving her something to fight for other than Clint. Natasha was quite surprised at the way Stark had changed all for a teenage girl. He claimed that she needed someone sensible to look up to, not a drunk playboy who spent his money frivolously. 'She brings out the better side in both of us,' Natasha realized. 'I can't afford to lose her and neither can Stark or Rhodes. We have to get there in time, and we will, because she needs us.' There was no greater driving force than that.

She decided to try and call the girl to warn her about Loki and grabbed the communicator that was in the Quinjet. Typing in Rosie's number, she waited, hoping she would pick up. The call didn't even connect.

Shit.

Natasha typed in the number of the burner phone she'd gotten for the girl, hoping that she would pick the call.

 _"Tasha?"_ Natasha sighed in relief. She'd never been happier to hear the kid's voice.

"Where are you?"

_"In my room, is anything wrong?"_

"I need you to get out of there right now. There's a huge fight coming your way and I don't want you in the middle of it."

 _"Okay—"_ There was a loud clanging sound on the other side. _"Uh, maybe not. Lockdown Protocol just got activated. Uncle Tony's made the shutters everything-proof, even a nuclear blast. I'm stuck here till Tony deactivates it himself or the entire building comes down."_

Natasha cursed Stark and his overprotectiveness. "Try to make as little noise as possible. Hopefully, Stark will be able to get you out of there soon."

_"Is he in his suit?"_

"Yes. Open a link to my comm and call out for help if you need it."

 _"I will. Please stay safe, Auntie Tasha."_ She hung up.

Natasha steeled herself before the others could notice. Thankfully, Rogers had been busy checking over his ammo to hear the conversation. She had no intention of telling him about Rosie before she could trust him. For now, she had some alien butt to kick.

* * *

Rosie wasn't too happy about being stuck in her room, but she couldn't do anything about the situation. Deciding that she had to make the best of it, Rosie pulled out her laptop and accessed the Stark Tower CCTV cameras. The ones on the penthouse floor and roof had been knocked out, but the others were working. She quickly sent out a text to Tony telling him to focus on the fight and not worry about her. The lockdown protocol had been initiated and she was perfectly safe.

Rosie asked Marlene to keep an eye on the footage and tell her if anything went wrong, while she used another laptop to hack into the NYPD database and their surveillance camera feed. It took her some time, but she gained access just in time to see a storefront camera capture a video of Tony falling off the Tower and his suit saving him just in time. Minutes later, a bright pillar of blue light emerged from the roof of the tower and into the sky. Rosie watched in horror as a wormhole opened and hundreds of aliens began pouring out of it, carrying weapons.

Now that she had an eye on what was going on all over the city, Rosie wracked her brains for ideas on what she could do to help. The civilians had to be evacuated, but the emergency responders would see to that, so what could she do?

Nothing, she realised.

Absolutely nothing. Rosie had never felt so useless in her life. She wanted to know if Natasha and Tony were safe, so she kept an eye on the footage hoping for a glimpse of them.

There was a loud roar outside, and Rosie watched as an enormous flying creature came out of the wormhole. It looked like a cross between a whale and a caterpillar. She watched helplessly as the creature knocked into the very building whose camera's she was seeing through and the walls caved in and the ceiling buckled, debris raining down onto the people in the room.

It was an office building, so she could see all across the floor as pieces of cement and tile fell on innocent workers. It was horrifying to watch, and Rosie felt bile rising in her throat. Hitting the power button, she crawled into her bed and drew the covers tight around her, trying to forget what she had seen.

Rosie did not know how long she sat like that, shivering with fear when there was a loud rumbling noise outside, and what sounded like repulsors. Rosie shot up in bed and tried to hear if it really was Tony in his suit, when the room shook violently. Someone, or something had exploded nearby. She moved as fast as she could, trying to get under the desk but it was too late. The rod that was holding up the curtains around her bed was jerked loose by the quake and it fell off of its position above Rosie's bed. She felt a heavy object slamming into her head and intense pain before everything went black.

* * *

Bruce had chosen to stay behind while the rest of the team went to get shwarma. Tony had disappeared a few minutes ago, and the others had left him the task of finding and informing the man where they had gone. A sudden voice made him jump. _"Dr. Banner? Mr. Stark wishes to speak to you. Shall I put him through?"_

"W-who's there?" Bruce shifted uneasily, looking around for anyone else.

_"My name is J.A.R.V.I.S, I am the Tower's resident AI. Mr. Stark says that the matter is urgent. Shall I accept the call?"_

Of course the man had an AI installed everywhere in the Tower. "Accept the call, J.A.R.V.I.S." Bruce said, feeling like an idiot when he spoke to thin air.

 _"Hey Banner? Is one of your PhDs a medical one?"_ That was unexpected. Tony sounded quite worried as well.

"No."

_"Do you know atleast some basic first aid?"_

"Yes, Tony. Why are you asking?"

_"I have someone who needs help, but the Medbay staff have all left to help out at the other hospitals. Do you think you can have a look at her?"_

"Uh, ok. Where is the Medbay?" She? Who would Tony be that worried about? He'd said that his girlfriend was not in New York, so who was this 'she'?

 _"J.A.R.V.I.S, show Dr. Banner to the Medical Room in the Living Area. Be as fast as you can, please."_ He was pleading? This was something serious. Bruce noticed a line of lights illuminating a specific corridor. He began hurrying along the corridor.

"I'm on my way."

Thankfully, Bruce was on the floor Tony had given to the Avengers, which was somewhere in the high 80's and wasn't too far from the medical room. He came into the room, panting slightly. "Who is it?" he asked.

Tony stepped aside to show a young girl, who seemed to be in her early teens. She was unconscious, and he could see the half-dried blood in her hair. Something had obviously hit her in the head. Bruce hurried over to her and examined her head. "Do you know what hit her?" he inquired, pulling on his gloves.

"The rod that was used to hold up the curtains around her bed. I don't know how long ago this happened." He sank into a chair, looking very worried. Her bed? She lived in the Tower?

Deciding to confront Tony after bandaging the girl's injury, Bruce gently parted her hair to find the cut on her head. It hadn't gone very deep, and was just below her hairline, meaning he wouldn't even need to cut her hair to bandage it. Taking advantage of her unconsciousness, he slowly cleaned the cut with antiseptic and wrapped it up neatly.

He turned to Tony, "Don't worry, she'll be fine. It doesn't even need stitches. She might have a minor concussion, but I'm quite sure she'll be fine within a week. Though I must say-"

"You want to know who she is." Tony sighed, and Bruce felt guilty for asking. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Tony cut him off. "I was looking forward to bringing you over to meet her, but I never imagined that your first encounter would be like this. This is Rosie. She's Rhodey's Goddaughter, but he adopted her about two years ago after an _incident_ with her biological father. Sweetest kid you'll ever meet. She's even got Romanoff wrapped around her finger."

Bruce's eyes widened. "Romanoff as in-"

"Black Widow, A.K.A. Superspy-assassin who has no feelings? Yeah, that's her Auntie Tasha."

Bruce was quite surprised when he heard that. She must be quite special to get that close to Natasha. He wondered how she'd come to live with Tony and Colonel Rhodes at the Tower, but from the way the genius scowled when he mentioned her father, it was obviously a touchy topic. Instead, he went for, "Why were you looking forward to the two of us meeting?"

The other man laughed, "She's a fan of yours. Quite in awe of your seven PhD's, keeps telling me how impressive it is, and how she would love some pointers. She's quite appreciative of your volunteer work in India as well. I figured that you'd like to talk to her. I.Q higher than mine, eidetic memory, crazy good computer skills and one heck of a killer glare. Rhodey's been calling her Mini Romanoff and I can't help but agree."

Bruce had no idea what to think of that. He'd never heard of a kid before who wanted to meet him for his academic achievements and it boosted his self-confidence quite a lot. "Does she go to school?" he asked, curious to know how they had managed to keep her away from the media.

The reply he got was, "She used to. The kid managed to finish the whole of high school in one year and now she's at MIT. Just a couple of months shy of beating my record as the youngest ever kid there."

MIT? She must be brilliant, if Tony was singing her praises so much. Bruce had gathered from the time he'd spent with the billionaire that he wasn't the type to lie or give anyone more credit than was due. Bruce couldn't wait to officially meet her when she was fully awake. "I guess you want me to keep her presence a secret from the team, right?" He asked.

"Actually, only Rogers and Thor don't know about her yet. But yeah, I would appreciate it it you didn't tell them. She's quite reserved and is terrified of the spotlight. We're trying to keep her a secret from the media till she turns eighteen, at the least. She's been training with the best of S.H.I.E.L.D. for about two years, and can give Romanoff a run for her money, but Rhodey and I aren't too keen on letting everyone know that she exists. I hope you understand."

"I do. Besides, I'd never put a kid in danger if I can help it." Bruce smiled at Tony. "I look forward to meeting her when she's better. I think I'll go crash in that room you gave me. Call if you need any help." He shook the man's hand and left. As Bruce was guided back to his room by a tiny robot, he pondered over Tony's offer to move into the Tower with him.

He didn't want to hurt anyone if he turned into the Hulk, and he knew that the property damage would be astronomical if the other guy stampeded around the Tower. Now that he'd seen Rosie, Bruce was even more hesitant to accept the offer, seeing that she'd be at a much greater risk if he lived with them.

Bruce had understood Tony's silent message. He'd told him his biggest secret to show that he trusted him and meant no harm. He just wasn't too sure if that sentiment would remain if the other guy got loose. Dropping onto his bed, Bruce enjoyed the fluffiness, and thought just before he drifted off - Maybe he could stay. Just for a few days... It's been ages since he was able to do any proper research. Maybe he could help with something Stark Industries is working on and repay Tony's kindness?


	12. Chapter 12

Rosie was cleared to get back to her normal schedule within the next three days by Dr. Banner. The first time she'd met him, it had taken a full five minutes for her to confirm the fact that Dr. Bruce Banner was actually standing in front of her and he was the one who'd bandaged her head. She just stared, jaw open, as he held out a hand for her to shake. "Hello, Miss Rhodes, it's nice to meet you. Tony's talked a lot about your brilliance, and I must say that I'm quite looking forward to working with you."

That managed to bring her back to reality. "Work with me?"

"Tony offered to let me stay with all of you in the Tower, and I accepted a couple of days ago. I understand if you don't-"

"That's amazing! I've always wanted to work with a real scientist!"

There was a shout from the next room. "Hey! What am I, chopped liver?" It was Tony.

"You're family! You don't count!" She retorted. "I've been working on getting A.I into the medical field for ages, and once I'm done with my degree, people will take my work seriously. Can you please help with such projects?"

"Of course, Miss Rhodes."

"Please don't call me that. As much as I love Dad, he's the only Rhodes around here. I'm just Rosie."

Tony walked in at that exact moment. "Well then, Just Rosie, want some toast?"

She had introduced Dr. Banner, who insisted she called him Bruce, to MARLENE, and he had been fascinated by how realistic she was. The two of them had persuaded Tony to let them open a new line of StarkBots, specially targeted at Children's Hospitals. Rosie had remembered how lonely the kids at the Pediatric Ward were during her short time at the Hospital. Their parents couldn't spend all their time entertaining the kids, and reading books soon got old when you were stuck in the same room all day, everyday.

She remembered how happily they had greeted her when she'd been in her wheelchair and some of the long-term patients had been so excited when she had let them draw on her cast. Many of them were too weak to play around or even have very long conversations and the nurses couldn't afford to spend all day with such kids. This was where the idea of building companion robots came in.

They could keep the kids company and monitor their vitals, allowing the staff to tend to other patients. Within three weeks of them working together, Rosie, Tony and Bruce had managed to produce their first prototypes. Investors had loved the idea, and they were on trial basis at a few of the Stark-owned hospitals in the area.

Rosie had created an A.I system in each robot and programmed them to respond to whatever name each individual child had given. The kids all had a great time giving the bots silly names and giggling each time they called the bots that. Officially, the bots were given serial numbers for names, but no one other than the manufacturing division used those. The cute little bots were a big hit and she'd already begun searching for ways to make them cheaper and easier to mass-produce.

Just one day before Rosie was scheduled to return to MIT, there was a Code Green. She had been working in the lab with Bruce and Tony was doing something in his garage when the robot he was tinkering with suddenly short-circuited and exploded, startling Bruce and raising his heart-rate sufficiently enough to bring out the other guy. Code green had been activated and the lab was shut down, but Rosie couldn't leave within the set time limit. She was trapped in the room with Bruce who was hulking out.

Rosie had seen the footage of how Natasha had almost calmed down the Hulk back at the Helicarrier and started to speak to him. Tony had shown her that video when she had asked for his help in finding a solution to help Dr. Banner.

"Shhhhh... Nothing's wrong. It's completely safe, big guy. You're fine. No need to freak out. It's just me, Rosie. You know me, right? I'm not going to hurt you, but you need to calm down before you hurt someone else, okay? Shhhh..." She slowly moved towards him, whispering to J.A.R.V.I.S. and telling him to soundproof the room. Rosie did not want any external sounds to spook the Hulk any further.

Bruce seemed to be wrestling for control with the Hulk, seeing that his skin kept switching from green to normal. It looked like Hulk was winning, though.

Rosie abandoned her efforts to stop the Hulk from coming out, when she saw that, though. "Hey Hulk? You can come out if you want to, but you have to let Bruce keep some control over you so that you don't hurt anyone, okay? Will you let Bruce have one hand on the wheel?"

There were a few growls, before she heard a, "Promise!" That surprised her. She hadn't expected the Hulk to speak so clearly. Without letting that faze her, Rosie replied, "That's awesome! Now can you turn around and show me your face? I'd love to meet you properly."

The big guy hesitantly turned and Rosie internally cheered when she noticed that he was smaller and his face looked more human than what she had seen from the footage. That fact that he could speak was another plus, she decided. Maybe it was possible for Hulk and Bruce to work together... She held out a hand. "It's awesome to finally meet you, big guy. My name's Rosie. What's yours?"

The other man/Hulk shook her hand with a gentleness she thought was impossible. "Rosie nice. Me Hulk. Hulk like Rosie."

"Aww... Thanks buddy. Rosie likes you too. Ya wanna do something?"

"Rosie play! Hulk play!" He looked so much like a lost puppy that it melted Rosie's heart. It reaffirmed her belief that Hulk was Bruce's way of letting off steam. She suspected that he'd been treated badly in his childhood, and that fear and insecurity had been hidden away until he injected himself with the super-soldier serum.

The serum supposed to enhance all aspects of a person, right? It was quite possible then, that the serum had managed to save him from the gamma radiation by fusing with it and forming the Hulk, making him a sort of stronger alter-ego that came out when Bruce felt threatened. In a way the Hulk was like a small child throwing a tantrum - confused, out-of-control and cranky. This meant that it was possible to calm him down, much like you would do to an angry child. Rosie was determined to research on this and come up with a solution

She thanked god that they were in the lab kept aside for building the children's robots. It had loads of games they had stocked up on to see if the robots could be programmed to play them with someone else. She led him over to the shelves. "Which one do you want to play?"

"I choose?"

"Yeah. You choose."

He looked at all of them for some time, before pointing to a mini foosball table they had bought as a joke a few weeks earlier. "Y'know how to play that?" He nodded. Picking teams, the two began to play. Hulk handled the controls with a cautiousness that seemed impossible for his huge hands. After he got bored, they moved to another game, then another one. They played together for ages and Rosie forgot all about the time, until Hulk let out a large yawn. "You sleepy, big guy?"

"Hulk tired. Want a nap!" He declared. She held his hand again, and guided him towards a heap of blankets and pillows in a corner. Tony had arranged for those in most of the labs so that the workers could take power naps and get right back to work. In his opinion, it was highly annoying to have to leave the lab for such 'trivial pursuits as sleep when I'm in the middle of a breakthrough'. The Hulk snuggled into the blankets and shut his eyes, slowly falling asleep. Gently covering him with a blanket, Rosie watched as he turned back into Bruce without waking up.

J.A.R.V.I.S automatically lifted the shutters and Rosie snuck out without waking him up. Tony came running over as soon as she walked out of the lab and engulfed her in a hug. She covered his mouth before he spoke and led him away, only letting him talk once they were out of earshot.

"I was so worried! J.A.R.V.I.S didn't have cameras in the room, so I couldn't even see what was happening. Short-stack, you gotta remember that I've got a heart condition here. I don't need anymore heart attacks!"

"Don't freak out, I'm fine. We played games for a while until he got tired and fell asleep. It was like keeping a small child company. Bruce seemed to be in there somewhere as well - the big guy didn't look as big as he did during the Chitauri thing. "

She told him about the conclusions she had drawn while interacting with the Hulk. He wasn't very enthusiastic about the way she'd gone about it, but he did agree with her hypothesis, promising to look into it with Bruce. Suddenly, Rosie felt the strength leave her legs and she stumbled, falling into Tony who caught her before she hit the floor. The adrenaline rush was fading and exhaustion began to creep in.

The events of the day caught up with her and she realised how hungry she was. "What time is it? I'm starving." Tony put an arm around her waist and let her lean on him as he helped her to the kitchen. "I should think so. You've been in that room for twelve hours straight, five of those with the Big Guy."

Sitting her down on a seat at the dining table, Tony bustled around in the kitchen, putting food on a plate and placing it in front of her before falling into the chair beside her. He muttered plans to himself about how he had to add in overrides to the Code Green protocol to allow the people in the area to get to safety. "You just shaved five years off my lifespan today - I don't care if you can keep the Hulk under control. The next time there's a Code Green, you're getting the hell out of there, no matter what."

"You don't understand, Uncle Tony!" she argued, fighting to suppress a yawn. "If the Hulk has someone he can see in a positive light, then it's possible that the same connection can be made with more than one person. We can help him, Tony, don't you see? During the alien invasion, he was in control because of his anger at Loki. What if we can convince him that we're not a threat, but his friends? He'll be more rational and focused, which can limit the collateral damage when Bruce Hulks out. "

He looked intrigued by the idea despite his earlier protests, so Rosie continued. "I have to get back to college tomorrow, so I'm trusting you and Auntie Tasha to remember what I just said just in case of a Code Green. Stay calm, talk to him like he's a young child, try to engage him with some fun activity till he gets tired and falls asleep. He'll probably change back to Bruce without waking up, just like today."


	13. Chapter 13

A few months after the entire mess in New York, Rosie was half-way through her second year at MIT. She and Suzie were celebrating the end of mid-terms with a Rush Hour movie marathon. The older girl returned from her trip to the convenience store to grab some popcorn earlier than Rosie had expected. 

She seemed to have run all the way back, since she was gasping for breath as she said. "Did you see the news? Tony Stark's on every channel!"

Startled, Rosie switched from Netflix to the local news channel. There was the aerial footage of a familiar house going up in flames with the caption, "Stark Home bombed and destroyed, CEO Pepper Potts and Billionaire Tony Stark missing, presumed dead." 

Rosie's head was spinning, and her vision was becoming blurry. She could hear Suzanne calling out to her, but it sounded fuzzy, as if she was miles away. Black spots danced in her vision, and she let the darkness take her.

"-SIE! ROSIE!" She awoke to someone shaking her. Was that water on her face? She opened her eyes to see Suzanne's worried face hovering above her head. She slowly sat up, holding her head. 

The fog in her brain cleared, and she suddenly remembered what she had seen on T.V. She grabbed hold of her friend, gesturing to the now switched-off gadget with a shaking hand. "Is it true? Are they really..." she couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence.

"I'm not sure, actually. Just before I switched it off, they were saying that Miss. Potts might have survived the explosion. But why..."

Suzie was her friend. She'd been planning to tell her the truth any day now... Crossing her fingers, Rosie hoped she wouldn't lose her best friend because she'd lied about her family.

"Look, it might sound a little crazy at first, but bear with me, 'kay?" 

"This is sounding too ominous for my liking."

Rosie cleared her throat and spoke to MARLENE, who was active on her phone. "MARLENE? Scan for any devices which are in earshot." 

_"None except for Miss. Wilson's personal cell and laptop and your own, Rosie."_

"Thanks, Marls." She turned back to Suzanne who had pursed her lips so tight that they had been reduced to a thin line. 

"There was a reason why I never told you my middle name." Rosie took a deep breath. "It's Rhodes. I'm Rosanna Rhodes Carter." She waited for her friend to make the connection.

"Rhodes? As in Colonel Rhodes, best friend of Tony Stark who he trusted enough to give a suit of his own?"

Rosie nodded. "The War Machine, or as they tried to rebrand it, Iron Patriot. Dad adopted me a few years ago and I've lived with him. That house-" she pointed to the T.V, "-was where I spent most of 2011, cuz he has to leave home a lot for duty and didn't want to leave me alone. We live with-with U-Un-Uncle To-Tony and Aun-Aunt P-Pepper-'' 

Suzanne's eyes widened as she realised what Rosie was trying to say and she enveloped Rosie in a warm, comforting hug. "I-I ca-can't lose th-them. Not af-after the E-Expo."

"I doubt you have to afraid of losing them, Rosie. Tony Stark's survived a whole lot worse and if Pepper Potts can kick ass in a boardroom as the CEO of a company like Stark Industries, I bet she's not the type to go down without a fight. Besides, I'm quite sure he has multiple contingency plans in place, given that he just issued a challenge to the Mandarin a few hours ago."

"HE DID WHAT?!" The now-familiar feeling of fury and exasperation at Tony's antics was welling up in her gut. "Did you just say that he pissed off a goddamn terrorist known for bombing public places?"

"I shouldn't have said that-"

"No, tell me. What did he do?"

Suzie gave her a wary look before she replied, "The news crews caught him coming out of a hospital after another Mandarin attack. He announced his address and told the Mandarin that he was waiting for him. Said the door would be unlocked and the Mandarin should show up if he was a 'man'."

Hospital... There was only one person who could have been there at the time to provoke that kind of a reaction from Tony - Happy Hogan. God, Rosie hoped he was okay. 

"Lemme get this straight. Tony Stark dared a fricking terrorist to come and get him on national television."

Suzanne winced, "It sounds really dumb when you put it that way, but yeah - the clip aired when you were still writing that last paper."

Rosie growled. "He better live through whatever crap he's gotten himself into, preferably with all limbs intact, so that I can properly chew him out in the end of everything." 

She was seething at Tony's horrible self-preservation skills. First, he blew up a roof with him on it to kill Stane. Granted, she hadn't met him yet, but still! 

Then, he refused to tell them that he was dying and every time he used the suit only speeded up the palladium poisoning. 

Third, he flew a nuke into a wormhole without knowing if he was gonna come back. 

And now, he had a posturing contest with a terrorist that no one had managed to locate despite every single government agency and being on the lookout. Looks like she'd have to have another discussion with Tony about self-preservation and not being an utter idiot. 

Rosie was pulled out of her reverie by Suzanne placing her phone in her hand. "Call your dad, talk to him. Then call any other family you have and reassure them that you weren't in the house when it fell down a cliff. Wait till all that's done to make plans on how to murder your uncle the next time you see him. I'll even give you advice if you want, but not before you call everyone I told you to. Shoo!"

She shepherded Rosie to the bedroom and shut the door, locking it. "I'm gonna finish the movie without you if ya don't call your father right now!"

* * *

The first thing Rosie did when she got down from the plane at the end of her second year was stalk up to Tony and smacked him upside the head. She then punched him in the gut. Taken aback by this unexpected attack, he stumbled. 

Rosie snarled, "Did you even take a damn second to think what the hell would Dad and I feel when we saw on the news that your damn house got bombed when you were in it because you provoked a terrorist group? DID YOU?"

Chest heaving with anger, she grabbed his shirt collar and yanked him down to her level. "Why the hell didn't you send Aunt Pep out of there at the first opportunity? It would have given you enough time to make a plan, _and_ make it much easier to carry it out as well! I spent half my midterm break worrying that you were dead!"

She was beyond mad and spent the next fifteen minutes chewing her uncle out. "I swear to god, Tony, you're making me rethink my decision to not join S.H.I.E.L.D. Following you on every damn mission to keep you from pulling another death-defying stunt like that is sounding sweeter by the minute. At the rate you're going, I'll have grey hairs before I turn twenty."

"You aren't joining them-"

"I wasn't planning to, but someone needs to keep an eye on you and who better than me? I'll have you know that Tasha told me that I'd make a great agent when she first met us, and now I'm even better than I was before. There's no damn way I'm not going on missions with you morons."

"Listen, Rosie. Neither your dad nor I-"

"As much as I hate to say it, I'm leaning more towards her line of thought than yours. If she wants to join S.H.I.E.L.D after college, then it's her choice. Someone needs to be out there on the field to watch your dumb ass twenty four-seven. She'll be old enough and good enough to do just that." 

Rosie joined her dad in staring down Tony Stark. "And were you even planning on telling me about Extremis?"

"Oh crap." The billionaire flinched.

"Oh crap indeed. We've got a lot of stuff to talk about."

* * *

The end of Rosie's third year at MIT left her with a choice. She could either accept her Bachelors in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering and go back to New York or stay another year and leave with not one, but two Master's degrees. Safe to say, it wasn't a hard choice at all. 

Yes, she'd chosen to double-graduate a short while after the Mandarin fiasco and had used all that she'd learnt from Tony to her advantage and got herself immediately into the Masters program for Mechanical Engineering, with the goal of specialising in Robotics. 

She also had long term plans to pursue Doctorates in Nanotechnology, specifically Nano-robotics and neuroscience. Rosie had enjoyed the experience of working with the Med-Bots and it had resulted in dozens of ideas for medical equipment. 

The sheer scope in the Medical field for SI was overwhelming. Rosie mainly had her eye on the Prosthetics part of it. Working with the Iron Man armour had given her a pretty good idea on how to go about making prosthetics that were a hundred times better than the best ones currently on the market and a neuroscience and orthotics degree would go a long way to help. 

It was a slightly hectic year, but she wouldn't give up the immense satisfaction of earning two Masters for anything. Finals weren't very hard and the feeling of accomplishment when she walked out of the hall after defending her thesis for both Masters was amazing. Rosie was on top of the world. 

The week was made even sweeter by Tony and Sharon managing to get time off to come and be there to listen to hear her defend her thesis. That said, they left immediately after and promised to return for graduation - which was a month later for whatever reason. With nothing to do on campus, Rosie and Suzie decided that it wasn't worth it to stay in the dorms now that they didn't have to and began to make plans for the holiday. 

The idea was that Rosie would spend a week or so at Suzie's when everyone in her family were extremely busy with work. Once Tony got back from setting up a new branch of SI in Romania - he'd flown there directly from Boston - she'd join him in his new house somewhere on the outskirts of Philadelphia for a restful two weeks before flying back to Boston for graduation.

Her last day in the dorms was interrupted by a call from Sharon.

_"Rosie, I want you to stay away from any property of Tony's that S.H.I.E.L.D or Natasha knows about."_

"Why? What happened?" 

_"Someone murdered Fury and Natasha has disappeared with Steve Rogers. Pierce has declared Rogers as a suspect in the assassination and the entire organisation's looking for him. He's no stealth operative, but Natasha's one of the best we've got. They won't get caught easily. My best guess is that she'll come to Tony to lie low for a while and use his resources to track the real assassin."_

"You don't want me to help her, do you?"

There was a sigh from the other side of the line. _" 'm sorry, kiddo. It's just that everyone whose anyone in S.H.I.E.L.D is out looking for her and Captain Rogers. There's also rumors flying around about moles and I don't want her to lead them right to you. I want to help Nat and Cap too, but risking your safety's not an option and I know she'll agree with me."_

Rosie hated abandoning Tasha, but Sharon's reasoning did make sense. If there was a mole, then there was no way to get in contact without being sure that they were both secure. Rosie had no experience with such stuff and her interference would only make it worse for Tasha and Captain America. 

She hoped they would be okay.

"Please be careful."

_"I will be. Love you kiddo."_

"Love you too Sharon."

The call ended and Rosie suddenly felt all the strength leave her legs as she heavily sat onto her bed. Sharon had sounded quite worried, which wasn't helping Rosie calm down. The entire thing stank of a cover-up. Why the hell would the boss declare Captain frickin' America as a murder suspect, especially in the assassination of his own boss?

Suzanne came in a few seconds later, blissfully unaware of her internal turmoil. 

"Sam's ecstatic to meet you. He says he can't wait to get to know the 'brave knight who got into a fight with a jock to save the honour of his beloved sister'." Suzie rolled her eyes in exasperation, "He might be in his thirties, but he acts like a little kid sometimes."

* * *

The plane ride was fairly short and Rosie was soon getting out of the airport with Suzanne and following the older woman towards the baggage claim. Hefting her bag, Rosie turned around when she heard a loud squeal. "SAM! Stop it!" 

A man she recognised as Sam Wilson was spinning Suzanne around in a hug, laughing. He let go of her after a while and she grabbed his arm and dragged him over to where Rosie was standing.

"Sam, meet Rosie. Rosie, this is my idiot brother."

"Hey!" He complained, before holding a hand out to Rosie. "It's wonderful to finally meet you, Rosie. Suzie's been singing your praises for the last four years."

She shook his hand. "Nice to meet you Mr. Wilson."

He slowly tilted his head to one side as he studied her face, "I think we've already met, though. You seem familiar..."

"We have, actually. I attended a few of your online sessions at the VA. My dad's in the army, so I wanted to be prepared if he needed any help." She wasn't going to tell anyone about Tony's issues. It was up to him to decide if he wanted others to know.

He smiled, "Right! I was quite surprised to see you there, considering that kids that young don't turn up for PTSD handling sessions very often. But call me Sam. None of that Mr. Wilson nonsense. Have you two got all of your things?"

They nodded. "Official Moving Out Day is after graduation, so we brought just enough to last us till then. You're coming there for graduation, right?" Suzanne asked her brother as the three of them walked towards his car. 

"I've booked the flight tickets. Any family coming for you Rosie?"

"My aunt and uncle said that they'll be there, but I don't know about the others. Dad's called for duty at zero notice quite often and my other aunt's really busy with work. She's supposed to be on an overseas trip at the time, so I don't know if she'll be back in time for grad day."

"That's a pity... But it'll atleast be better than my college graduatio-" There was a thud as Suzanne dropped her bag on the floor and did her best to cover her brother's mouth so that he couldn't finish his sentence. There was a bit of a scuffle before Sam smirked triumphantly and dislodged her hand from his mouth to continue. "-Suzie drank some juice they'd had out and decided to blow chunks right in the middle of the valedictorian's speech. Heard it took them a week to get all the puke out of the floorboards."

"Samuel. Thomas. Wilson." Suzanne punctuated each word by smacking him with her duffel. "I thought we agreed that that incident was better forgotten!" 

"Now why were you under that impression, sister dear? I don't remember any such agreement."

"Oh, you're so on now." 

The two bickering siblings led the way out of the airport and Rosie followed with a smile and excitement about the fun she was going to have staying with the Wilson siblings.


	14. Chapter 14

Steve was desperate when he knocked on Sam Wilson's door. He literally had no other options. 

Carrying an unconscious Natasha had taken a lot out of him, especially after the bomb blast. He was covered in plaster and dust and sweating profusely and Natasha wasn't in much better shape. 

Thankfully, Sam didn't look too pissed when he opened the door. "Hey man."

Steve hated putting him on the spot, but they had nowhere else to go. "I'm sorry about this. We need a place to lay low."

Natasha added, "Everyone we know is trying to kill us."

"Not everyone." Sam opened the door and let them in. "Try not to make too much noise. The girls are still asleep upstairs"

"The girls?" Steve was confused.

"My sister and her friend. They just got back from college yesterday."

That was new. Sam had never mentioned having a sister before. If she was in college...

Steve felt even guiltier now, dragging Sam into this mess when he had a younger sister to look after. There was also the matter of her friend. He'd now put two young women in danger just by association. This opened up an entirely new train of thought for him as he cleaned up.

Other agents at S.H.I.E.L.D were not like him or Natasha. 

They had families, people who depended on them; people who would be in deep trouble if HYDRA caught hold of them. He'd seen enough during the war to know that HYDRA didn't care a single bit about committing atrocities on innocents. An involuntary shudder ran up his spine as he recalled some of the gruesome sights he'd seen in the HYDRA prisons. 

There had to be some way to protect the innocents from the mess that he was currently involved in, but he simple didn't know enough about the future to come with a proper plan. Deciding to bring it up with Natasha, Steve pushed the matter to the back of his head.

He trusted Natasha with his life, but it didn't mean that she didn't have her secrets. She had been in this business for years, she might have hidden allies who could help them. 

That said, he knew she didn't trust easily and made it his main job build some of that necessary trust. That was why he told her the truth, "I would now. And I'm always honest." When she asked him if he trusted her to save his life.

"You seem pretty chipper for someone who just found out they died for nothing." she observed.

He simply replied, "Well, I guess I just like to know who I'm fighting." And he did. Steve was glad to know that Peggy, Howard and Phillips' work hadn't been a complete failure. S.H.I.E.L.D would survive. They just had to get the rot out.

Sam knocked on the open doorway at that exact moment, "I made breakfast. If you guys...eat that sort of thing."

They were sitting at the table when Steve heard the sounds of two people moving down the stairs. A young woman who had a remarkable resemblance to Sam came into view first. Any idiot could see that she was his sister.

She was looking back over her shoulder and talking to someone who they couldn't see. "-go for a walk. God knows I need the fresh air after being cooped up so long in our dorm. Sam said that he'd made breakfast-" She had seen him.

Steve gave her a tiny wave and a smile as her eyes widened comically. She stumbled backwards out of the kitchen, shouting, "Sam? Is that Captain America sitting at our dining table?"

"Wait what?" He heard another female voice and a younger, much shorter girl came into view behind her. Steve recognized her, and his eyes widened. Sam walked inside, carrying a jug of milk. "Cap, this is my sister Suzanne and-"

At that exact moment, Natasha came in. Her eyes glossed over Suzanne and landed on the other girl, both of them doing double takes when they saw each other. "Rosie?" She asked just as a "Rosanna?" slipped from his lips.

Natasha whirled on him. "How the hell do you know her?"

"Whoa, chill, Tasha. We met while I was visiting Aunt Peggy."

"That's her?" Suzanne asked, pushing Rosie behind her and standing protectively in front of the younger girl. "How did you know she was staying with us?" She demanded.

Sam looked as confused as Steve felt. He raised his voice. "Whoa whoa. Wait a second. What the heck is going on here in my kitchen? How do you know Miss Super-spy here, and why the hell is Suzie so aggressive?"

Natasha sighed and sat down beside Steve, "You told her but not him?"

The girl just shrugged. "I'm just a kid who's done with college and wanted a break. So you really are on the run from S.H.I.E.L.D, then?"

That caused Steve to nearly jump out of his seat with shock, and Sam dropped the jug with a loud thud. Natasha didn't turn a hair at the casual revelation. 

"H-How did you know that?" He asked.

"I've got other family in S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Aunt was afraid you'd come to me for help and leave a trail your colleagues could follow."

Steve needed more than that. "Why would Natasha come to you for help? No offense, but you're really young to mixed up in this sort of thing."

"Can I tell them? Dad was anyway planning to tell the team when I joined you guys on missions." Steve was now utterly confused. Team? Did she mean the Avengers.

Natasha nodded her head. 

"Great." Rosanna clapped her hands. "My dad's Colonel Rhodes - you might know him as War Machine? Thanks to that, I've got access to all of Uncle Tony's stuff, including off the grid safe houses and supplies." 

Rhodes... 

Steve remembered the dark-skinned Colonel who he had been introduced to a few weeks after the New York battle by Stark, who in his typical fashion just said, "Capsicle, Honeybear. Honeybear, Capsicle." 

The Colonel had given a fond-eye roll in Stark's direction before properly introducing himself. He was a pleasant, dependable man and Steve had quite enjoyed their conversation.

"That's not the point of the discussion, Captain. What's going on at S.H.I.E.L.D that would make Captain America a fugitive? And don't even try to claim it's classified." She crossed her arms and leveled a Black Widow level glare at Steve and Natasha. "Talk." She ordered, and Steve found himself obeying the order of a girl who didn't look like she was even out of her teens.

Both Suzanne and Sam listened to them as they explained the situation. 

"Okay, so you're telling me that S.H.I.E.L.D is currently infiltrated by HYDRA and the guy at the top, A.K.A Pierce, is one of them and has put the entire organization on your trail for supposedly being involved in the killing of the only guy who had the authority to oppose him? You think there's something fishy going on and you need to interrogate Sitwell for info. Right?"

Steve was impressed by her summary of the situation. "So far, yes. Problem is, two of the most wanted people in Washington can't exactly capture one of S.H.I.E.L.D's officers in broad daylight."

"The answer is: you don't." Sam, who had slipped out of the room sometime earlier came back in, tossing a couple of files on the table. Steve opened them and glanced at it. It was a picture of Sam and another man, who he guessed was his deceased ex-wingman Riley. "Call it a resume." He told Steve.

Natasha seemed to recognize it, "Is this Bakhmala? The Khalid Khandil mission, that was you? I heard they couldn't bring in the choppers because of the RPGs. What did you use, a stealth chute?"

Sam just shook his head and gestured to another file. "No. These."

Steve had thought that nothing would surprise him anymore, but things kept popping up, like the file he now held in his hands. "I thought you said you were a pilot."

"I never said pilot."

With that skill set, he would be quite helpful, but Steve wasn't too keen on involving him, "I can't ask you to do this, Sam. You got out for a good reason."

"Dude, Captain America needs my help. There's no better reason to get back in."

"NO IT IS NOT!" It was Suzanne, who hadn't said much till then. "At least, not until I'm convinced that you aren't going to get yourself killed. If I say no, you aren't going and I'm sure Rosie's on my side."

"Sure. I can knock him unconscious or put him in a coma for a few days. Which one do you want?" Rosanna casually replied, serving herself some pancakes. "What?" She asked when they stared at her in shock, "I've been training with Tasha for four years now. Some of it tends to rub off on you after a while." 

While Sam tried to reason with his sister, Rosanna glanced over at the file Steve was holding and grinned as soon as she saw the words EXO-7 FALCON. "So, should I start calling you a giant metal chicken now?"

"How did you know that?"

"Who made the wings?"

"Stark Industries..." Sam murmured. 

Natasha had a thoughtful expression on her face as she said, "How long will it take you to get into the database?"

Before Steve could even realise what Nat was asking, Rosanna had replied, "Couple of hours to get a foot in. Maybe half a day if you want it to be completely untraceable."

"You've hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D?" Steve demanded, the shock wearing off.

"It's not like it's that difficult. I was fourteen the first time-"

"First time?" Sam asked in despair.

Rosanna shrugged self-consciously, "It was only twice. Well, thrice if you count the time I helped Tony during the Chitauri invasion. S.H.I.E.L.D has very weird firewalls, okay? Some files are so heavily encrypted that I can't get into them without a direct connection to S.H.I.E.L.D, others so easy to read that-oh crap." She paled. "I've been holding proof about the existence of HYDRA for the past four years without realising it." 

Natasha perked up at that, "Are you sure?"

"When I searched their database for any record of you, it took me a few days to plan, but I was in and out of the files with none the wiser. That was when I noticed the weird classification of files.

"Some files had absolutely everything about agents' lives, including full details on family and ridiculous stuff like the name of their favourite first grade teachers, while others just had details of the missions they had carried out. There were other things too, like some files were much more harder to break into than others with the same clearance level. 

"You know Tony looked up Phase 2 during the Chitauri thing, but that's nothing compared to whatever's under Project Insight. The entire thing's covered in something like a dome of ten-metre thick concrete that delivers fatal shocks if touched."

Natasha voiced what Steve was thinking, "You're saying that the S.H.I.E.L.D files are less protected than the HYDRA ones, making it easy for you to recognise them."

"That's an overly simplified explanation, but yeah. From what I could see, data was being constantly updated, but no one had bothered to check the core coding for years. HYDRA had taken advantage of that and hidden their agents' personal information while letting S.H.I.E.L.D compile data on the loyal agents, making their plans much easier."

Steve suddenly remembered what he'd thought earlier about saving agent data. "Can you remove the data regarding the agents? I have a hunch that this is not going to go down well, so can you isolate the information and pull it out of the system, making sure nothing is left behind?"

"Piece of cake. I've already done it for Clint. It's not that hard. I might be able to save a few higher-level files as well. Do you want me to work on anything else?"

"The Winter Soldier." He and Nat chorused in unison. Steve continued, "We need whatever we can get on him. He's an assassin for HYDRA and definitely enhanced in some way. I'm sure they'll send him after us if we get too close for comfort."

Rosanna nodded in acknowledgement. "I'll be upstairs with my stuff. Don't disturb me unless it's important. I really don't want to accidentally trip any alarms and have HYDRA getting to know that we're on their case."

* * *

As Steve sat in the back of the van with handcuffs on along with Natasha and Sam, he recalled the moment where everything had changed.

_They had managed to capture Sitwell and were heading towards the Triskelion when Natasha's phone rang. There was only one person who could be calling, and that meant that she had found something. Natasha picked up the phone and held it to her ear._

_"What is it?" She asked tersely, giving Sitwell no clues on who had called. Steve couldn't hear what Rosanna was saying, but he could see Natasha's expression in the rear-view mirror. One of her eyebrows moved a tiny bit and her mouth twitched slightly, meaning it was something serious._

_"I'll give it to the Captain." She passed the phone to Steve who was riding shotgun as Sam drove to Rhode Island._

_"Yes?" He asked once the phone was in his hands._

_"I found the identity of the Winter Soldier, Captain Rogers. You're not going to like it." There was a pause before the next sentence caused his blood to run cold. "It's your friend, James Barnes. He survived the fall due to a prototype serum Zola had injected into him during his earlier capture. His left arm was lost in the fall, so they replaced it with a very deadly metal one. There's reports on how they brainwashed and mind-controlled him into becoming an assassin. I haven't read any of them, though. Do you want me to pull those files out?"_

_Steve pushed all his shock to the back of his mind, and debated his decision. Finally, he made a choice. "Do it. That sort of thing shouldn't be public knowledge. Do the same with any more you find."_

_He hung up the phone, avoiding the eyes of the other three people in the car. His best friend was alive! Bucky was alive!_

_But then he remembered what Rosanna had said about what HYDRA had done to him. The excitement and happiness was overshadowed by guilt and grief. What had happened to change his friend into the robotic man he'd attacked outside his apartment?_

_It was all Steve's fault. If he had only managed to pull Bucky up from that train, he would still be whole and happy, not the shell of a man he is now. All those assassinations, all those lives lost because Steve couldn't manage to pull up a man hanging from a train even with super-strength._

Everything had gone downhill after that call. The fight on the highway was a blur of metal, bullets, explosions and action, with the only clear memory being of Bucky's unmasked face.

Just five words had managed to break Steve. 

**"Who the hell is Bucky?"**

Uttered in that stone cold tone, Bucky-no-The Winter Soldier's words had dashed Steve's slim hope about Rosie being mistaken when she told him who the Winter Soldier was. Suddenly, the idea of Bucky being dead seemed a million times better than him being what he is today. Bucky had no idea who he himself was, for Chrissake! 

Steve wished with all his might that he could go back to that fateful day and either save his friend from falling, or even shoot Bucky himself to prevent HYDRA from getting their hands on him.

He was only half-aware of what he was muttering. "It was him. He looked right at me like he didn't even know me. I didn't believe it at first, but now?" He was too distracted to focus on Sam and Natasha were saying, but one of the guards tazing the other brought him back to reality. 

The guard removed the helmet and shook out her hair. "Ah. That thing was squeezing my brain." It was Hill. She took off their handcuffs and cut a hole in the bottom of the van, obviously planning their escape.

Steve suddenly remembered the helicopters that had taken videos of their arrest. Sam's face was in full view, and he would soon be identified, meaning that HYDRA agents would show up at his house anytime now. However well Natasha had trained Rosanna, he didn't think she would be able to fend off a surprise attack from a horde of enemy agents. He grabbed Hill's arm.

Checking that the enemy guard was truly knocked out, he spoke, "I'm going to need a favour, Hill. There are two girls all alone at Sam's house which will soon be stormed by HYDRA agents. Can you arrange for them to be safely brought here? I promise you that they can help us." She nodded.

Steve saw a glint of determination in her eyes when she said, "I'll go myself. Anything to confirm that you sent me?"

It was Natasha who answered. "Tell her that Auntie Tasha's looking forward to that farm holiday. Bird-watching sounds interesting." Thankfully, Hill didn't waste any more time questioning her before leading them to a getaway car where a man was waiting for them in the driver's seat. Instead of getting in with them, she got into another car and drove off back in the direction they had come from.

Natasha gave Steve a small smile as he helped her wrap a bandage around her shoulder to try and stop the bleeding. "You're a good guy, Steve. I'll always be in your debt for keeping Rosie safe." 

Before he could wave it off as nothing, Sam spoke up, "She's right. I can't bear to think of what would have happened if you hadn't thought of that, Cap. Suzanne's all I got in way of family, and Rosie's as good as another little sister to me. I don't know what I'd have done if I had lost them both."

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted on Wattpad and Fanfiction.net under the same username.


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